Though the sign out front still reads “Coming Soon,” the brand new Kent County Library was doing brisk business on its first day of operations June 21.
Customers thumbed through newspapers and surfed the Internet at computer stations in the light-filled main collections room of the new facility, located in the Longacre Village shopping center, south of Camden.
Even though the library’s grand opening isn’t until Tuesday, June 29, County Librarian Hilary Welliver said the “soft opening” already shows how far the institution has come.
“What we have the most of is space; it’s great to have more space,” she said.
The morning rush of patrons would have been tough to accommodate at the library’s former location, a cramped and crowded building less than 2 miles north on Route 13.
With 10,000 square feet of space, there’s room for a lot more than just stacks of books in the $2.1 million facility.
“It allows us to do more — more of what people have been asking for,” Welliver said. “To be more helpful, to expand the collections, to do so many functions we haven’t been able to do before.”
In the library’s new reading room, filled with comfy chairs and small tables, Camden resident and library regular Catherine Pettie sat enjoying a book as the morning sun filtered through a wall full of windows.
She said the new facility is quite an upgrade.
“It’s a big difference,” she said. “I could see college students or people who have work assignments here, children after school. I can see me, even in the wintertime, sitting back here, reading, getting on the computer.”
Welliver said the reading room is her favorite place in the new building, but a close second has to be the children’s collection, housed in its own room behind the circulation desk.
“The children’s department, having come out of children’s work myself, is very near and dear to my heart,” she said. “I really like the Little Tykes computer. We like it so much we ordered a second one. It’s loaded with educational software.”
The colorful, kid-sized computer station was one of the first things the new library’s inaugural patrons chose to play around with.
Babysitter and library staffer Emily Warren brought Austin and Katelyn Foraker, ages 5 and 2, to explore the children’s section.
Austin is getting ready to enter kindergarten, and Warren said the kid-friendly math and reading computer programs really are helping him prepare for school.
“This computer, just today it’s already helping him,” she said. “It’s a great resource. [The library] keeps them busy and keeps them going when they’re not in school, in an educational way.”
Through the children’s section is the library’s conference room, which members of the public will be able to reserve for events.
At the old library, the conference room only could accommodate a dozen people at most. Handling a larger group meant closing off the nonfiction section.
Overall, all the new amenities add up to a library that can better serve the community, Welliver said.
“There’s so many good things about this it’s hard to list,” she said. “It’s not just that it’s 40% larger and there’s more space, the way the space is laid out is more useable. We’ve never had a place where you could spread out with a newspaper.”
Email Doug Denison at doug.denison@doverpost.com.
