Ten months ago, Karen Dixon stood outside the entrance to the Hopkinton Town Library and stared down at the sidewalk, not wanting to look inside at the damage left by a fire in the library’s cupola.
On Friday, Dixon smiled as she stood in the library’s new cafe wing, located to the left of the entrance when you walk inside. The DVD collection is still there, as well.
Dixon described the last 10 months as a “challenging journey.”
“There were lots of different moving parts that had to come together like a puzzle,” she said.
Last August, a fire broke out in the cupola over the Hopkinton Town Library in Contoocook during a lightning storm. Water poured down into the library’s main room as firefighters battled the blaze, and thousands of volumes were left with water and smoke damage.
Only about 10% of the library’s total collection – about 40,000 volumes – was lost. The majority of the damaged volumes were wiped clean one-by-one and returned to the shelves in time for a soft-opening earlier this week and a grand reopening celebration on Sunday from 3 to 5 p.m.
Neighbors and residents are happy to have their library back in full form.
“It’s so integrated into the fabric of the community, and we’re all very proud of it,” said David Dustin, who lives a couple of miles from the library.
Dustin is founding member and trombonist in the Tall Granite Big Band, which will perform during Sunday’s grand reopening in front of the library.
David’s wife, Kathleen, was visiting the library Friday morning to pick up a pair of passes for the Currier Museum of Art in Manchester for her and her mother. She said her 91-year-old mom is a weekly visitor.
“She uses it all the time to get movies and CDs,” Kathleen said. “It’s a really important resource.”
Patrons trickled in after the library opened at 10 a.m. Friday. By 10:30, both of the library’s new study rooms were occupied. Two women did work on their laptops in one room while another woman home-schooled her children in the other.
Despite the fire, library services were not interrupted. The staff opened a smaller satellite library in the basement of the Slusser Senior Center, just across Houston Drive from the library, that held between 600 and 700 books.
All of its online services remained, including digital e-books and audiobooks. Museum passes continued to be offered, and many books were available to borrow via an inter-library loan. Libraries in surrounding communities stepped up and honored Hopkinton library cards for several months.
“They’ve done a heck of a job trying to keep it going,” David Dustin said, adding that the library’s leadership “had to keep things together and coordinate the restoration effort. That’s a huge job.”
Dixon said the staff received good feedback and encouragement from patrons as they tried to keep some form of a library open while its building was restored.
“We weren’t alone in this whole process – it was a community effort,” she said. “It made us feel appreciated and made us realize how much the community values the library.”
The new library has a familiar feel to its previous form, but it comes with some new bells and whistles, aside from the cafe and private study spaces. ADA compliant doors were installed at the front entrance, a ceiling under the cupola was put up to reduce energy heating costs and increase lighting in the space below, and more storage and shelving space was added throughout.
As distressing as the fire was, Library Director Donna Dunlop saw these improvements as the silver lining. When the work was complete and furniture was moved in and the collection was back in its place, the doors opened back up and had a soft opening Wednesday.
Dunlop said the library was filled with kindergartners Thursday morning, an annual spring tradition where the youngsters come in to get their first library card.
“It was like riding a bicycle,” Dunlop wrote in an email Thursday. “The staff got right back into the swing of things, and it feels great.”
(Nick Stoico can be reached at 369-3321, nstoico@cmonitor.com or on Twitter @NickStoico.)