The 109-year-old library is being renovated because of roof leaks, mold, air quality and other problems.
Holyoke Public Library will be undergoing at $14.5 million renovation beginning in October.HOLYOKE – The search is on for a temporary home for the Holyoke Public Library because a $14.5 million renovation will begin in October.
“It needs to be downtown, we don’t want to lose that,” library board president Stephen H. “Terry” Plum said Thursday.
Among the possible sites to house the library are the city-owned War Memorial building nearby at 310 Appleton St. and Open Square, a privately owned former paper mill off Lyman Street, Plum said.
Mayor Elaine A. Pluta said her preference is that the library relocate to a city-owned facility.
“It’s going to cost money to retrofit wherever they do go and I’d rather have that go into a city building,” Pluta said.
Work on the library at 335 Maple St. will consist of renovating the 109-year-old limestone building and construction of an addition. The exterior has cracks, which forced placement of a safety fence around the perimeter.
Roof leaks have caused mold and other water damage inside. That led to air-quality problems, prompting relocation of most of the paper records, photographs and other archival items from the Holyoke Room upstairs to Holyoke Community College.
In order to meet standards of the state Board of Library Commissioners, additional space is needed for children’s programs and for computer and literacy training, officials have said.
The work will take 18 months to two years. The goal during the temporary housing of the library is to keep as many of the books, DVD’s, other loan materials and public computers available as possible, Plum said.
Space restrictions with the relocation might require that the 21 library staff members keep the books and other materials available for loan only on a request-at-the-counter basis, he said.
“It works fine. You just can’t wander up and down the stacks and serendipitously see a book that catches your attention,” Plum said.
The library board's building committee is scheduled to discuss possible sites on Friday at 9 a.m. at the library, he said.
The city is borrowing $5.5 million to help in funding the project. The rest of the project’s funding consists of $4.6 million from the library board’s endowment, a $4.3 million state grant and fund-raising.
In May, PeoplesBank of Holyoke gave $200,000 for the library project.
Also keeping library staffers busy this summer is the transition to an item-sharing software called “Evergreen.” By mid-October, Holyoke and the other 155 libraries that belong to the Central/Western Massachusetts Automated Resource Sharing system must change to the new electronic system, a library press release said.
The member libraries annually circulate more than nine million books, CD’s, DVD’s and other items to a million borrowers that use the online system.
Evergreen will let patrons establish and update lists of preferred library items and make the lists available to the public. Possible uses for such lists include book clubs, genre and themed lists, and recommendations.
Also, the library’s summer reading program for young people will continue Wednesday at 10:30 a.m. with a 45-minute performance by magician Peter Boie. The show is free.