These days, Nancy Claris leads tours through the Epsom Public Library with a bounce in her step and pride in her heart.
She beams over the institution she helped build, the relatively new version of it, with its endless display of reading material all neatly organized on shelves in three separate rooms, and its space for meetings and multi-media events.
Once, though, Claris felt boxed in at the town’s former library. For nearly three decades, the place was bursting at the seams, far too small to accommodate the books and magazines shoehorned into it each day.
Aisles inside were narrow and tight, with people maneuvering past each other like cars on a Granite State covered bridge. Some material spilled to the outside, in a trailer near treacherous Route 4. The visibility was just fine with Claris.
Perhaps, she hoped, residents would notice this poor excuse for a library, this eyesore. Perhaps they’d see the need for a new one.
“The uglier the better,” joked Claris, the library’s longtime director who retired this month. “I was hoping someone would paint a little graffiti on it. It was a lovely building, but we just outgrew it.”
She became the face of the library before stepping down, handing the reins to Kaitlin Camidge of Pembroke on July 1. In fact, after 42 years as its director, and as the main thrust behind the effort to build a new building 15 years ago, Claris served as the library’s front and back covers, as well as its spine.
Said Andi Axman, an Epsom Public Library trustee, “It’s great to have a resource like this in a town this size, and it was all because of Nancy’s vision and dedication to seeing it through. We were very lucky to have her. This was her dream.”
The dream was more nightmare in 1979 when Claris – a 1964 Pembroke Academy graduate – took over. She was part-time then. That gave her time to care for her two young daughters, who were both in grade school.
The building was dedicated in 1902. It was 700 square feet on each of two floors, a total of 1,400 square feet.
That’s when books and back issues of magazines sometimes might be stored outside in a trailer. There was a small room for children’s programs, but the town park was sometimes used to accommodate everyone interested in attending.
Later, there was no handicap accessibility to reach the computers in the basement. And privacy was nowhere to be found, either, said Valerie Long, who was on the building committee at the time and is now a library trustee.
She was downstairs in the old building and overheard a staff member teaching an adult, perhaps around 30 years old, to read.
“I was so embarrassed myself and for him,” Long told me. “I went upstairs and said to Nancy, ‘Can’t we afford a bigger library?’ ”
“The building didn’t feel like a library,” Claris said. “Something needed to be done for it to go any further. We couldn’t do it there.”
In the beginning, they couldn’t do it at all. Officials – and those who saw a library as a small-town institution to be cherished – tried and failed at least three times to secure a warrant article that, if passed at town meeting, would have funded a new library and town hall.
But eventually, supporters realized that residents would never agree to pay for a new town hall as part of their budget. Taxes, they thought, should be used for that.
Building a new library, however, with no town hall attached was a far more attractive vision.
“We hoped that they would give us money,” Claris said. “And they did.”
About $1 million was raised, $400,000 from the town and $600,000 through private donations. Claris led the charge. Her vision: books, of course, but also a place to gather, exchange ideas, plan and feel a sense of identity.
The entire process – from fundraising to opening day – took four years. The new library opened in December of 2006. It’s 7,100 square feet, more than five times the space of the last.
There are comfortable chairs, big meeting rooms, polished wood tables and chairs, a multi-purpose room to watch films and a revolving door of artwork provided by artists in the region.
There are nine computers now, not two. Recently, longtime Epsom resident John Lindahl pecked on a keyboard with purpose. He’s a white-haired gentleman, a retired property maintenance worker, who’s lived in town for 30 years. He’s got time. He’s using it wisely, pursuing his associate’s degree online.
“Very helpful to come here,” Lindahl told me. “And yes, a lot bigger than the old one.”
Shelves of books – looking neat, not cramped – tower over wide aisles. There are 64 windows. Plenty of light. Children can read about tractors or coyotes or butterflies, then move with Vickie Benner, director of children’s services, to a separate room to learn crafts.
There’s so much activity, in fact, that Camidge – the new director who once worked at the library at Merrimack Valley High School – leaves a key for people who are meeting at the library after 7 p.m. closing time. Just lock up and turn the lights off, she tells them.
“There are groups in the building almost every night for meeting space,” Claris said. “Epsom has a traffic circle, but it did not have a community center. Now we have AA meetings, Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, children’s programs.”
Claris isn’t leaving the institution she helped build. Not yet. She still works at the library, part-time. Camidge is her boss, which means Claris no longer schedules trustee meetings or the hours her staff will work, nor worry about calling an electrician if there’s a short circuit.
She works three days a week. That suits her fine.
“I used to get home after 7,” Claris said. “I’d bring things home with me, in my head. It will be nice to have extra time and flexibility about what will be for dinner and when.”