As many of you know, the library is scheduled for a renovation project this spring.  Omni Associates were hired to be our architects and we just completed the bidding process.  The contract was awarded to Commercial Builders Inc. of West Virginia.  We had a meeting last week to discuss the logistics of the project.  The one concern of the library staff and board was to interfere as little as possible with the operation of the library. 

 

The library will be getting new ceiling, lighting and flooring throughout the entire building.  The contractors are ordering these materials, some of which will take 6-8 weeks to arrive.  Work will begin in early June and will be done at night to interfere as little as possible with the day-to-day operations of the library.  The project is being done in four phases beginning with the front of the library where the magazines and DVDs are stored.  

 

Then they are moving to the center of the library where most of the book collection is housed, followed by the back of the library where the young adult collection and music collections can be found.

 

The last part scheduled is the hallways, conference room, kitchen and adjacent work areas.  This will all be completed in July.

 

There will be some dislocations of services.  The library staff will be packing up books, magazines, and DVDs in the front of the library so that the shelving can be moved out while the new flooring is installed beginning in mid-May.  The front Internet computers will also be packed up and unavailable although there will still be Internet access in the back of the library.  We plan to move some of the newest books,

newspapers, magazines and DVDs to the back of the library while the first part of the project is underway, but the bulk of those materials as well as the West Virginia reference collection will be boxed and stored in the conference room.

 

As they move through each section certain parts of the collection will have to be boxed up and stored in the conference room.  Once that section is completed we will unbox them and replace them on the shelves, but certain books will be impossible to find during June-July.  The children’s section is the newest area of the library and it will only be receiving new lighting so there will be little dislocation there, but since renovations are going on in June and one circulation desk at a time will be unavailable, we are cancelling summer reading program this year. 

 

Since the conference room is being used for storage purposes, most of our programming is also put on hold.  Please pay attention to our news releases for more information.

 

We are expanding some services in the next few months to help allay these issues.  Hoopla, a download service of books audiobooks, movies and music will be up and running later this spring and ReadSquared, an online book reading program, will also become available by June.  More information on these two online programs will be forthcoming closer to when they are accessible.

 

There is going to be a lot of confusion for the next few months, but the end results should be terrific.  We plan to keep a photographic record of the changes so bookmark the library’s website and Facebook page.