KENT, Conn.—The staff at Kent Memorial Library spent this past week preparing for the movers who are scheduled to arrive on Monday. They will cart the library’s collections to temporary locations in anticipation of the February start of an expansion that has been years in the planning.
The staff welcomed visitors to the old library last Saturday, where townspeople were treated to “cake and bubbly” as they said goodbye to the building they have known for so many years. A heavy snowfall dissuaded many who might have come, but library director Sarah Marshall said about 40 or 50 persons of all ages, mostly those living within walking distance, attended the event.
With the reception behind them, staff members worked through the collections housed at the Main Street building, turning books on their sides that are to be moved to the temporary location in Kent Green. About one-third of the collection will be available there, primarily more modern works.
Marshall said the other volumes will be packed away in various storage places in town and will be inaccessible during the construction phase. “But we can order any book that readers want through inter-library loan,” she said.
The new configuration of the library will link the historic part to the former firehouse adjacent to it. Stacks will be located in the converted firehouse, while much of the older section will be renovated to provide office and meeting spaces. The second floor of the firehouse will provide a large assembly room.
The cozy reading room, the oldest part of the library, will remain untouched except that its entrance will be moved to the opposite side of the fireplace, closer to the new access point for the library.
The firehouse has been used in recent years to house books sold in the library’s massive, summer-long used books sale. Marshall said that the new configuration will not allow the used books to be stored there in the future and, while the sale will be held this summer, it will be smaller and located in Kent Green.
“It has gotten so large,” she said, “and it can’t go on that way. It will be smaller and, even when we come back here, it will have to seek a new level.”
She noted it is a major fundraiser for the library and is beloved by the volunteers that man it. It draws tourists and book dealers all summer and getting people to embrace the change was “the hardest sell, but selling books is not our mission. We are a library,” she said.
The transfiguration of the buildings is expected to cost $7.7 million, when soft costs such as a contingency fund, insurance and the like are factored in. Marshall said the Library Association has raised about $7.4 million but that fundraising will continue while construction takes place.
