From left, retired librarian Ann Sayers, Keene Public Library Director Aaron Miller and Assistant Clerk Alexa Dumas pose for a photo inside the Keene Public Library on Wednesday, July 12. (News photo — Elizabeth Izzo)

KEENE — The Keene Public Library is reopening this Saturday after being closed for nearly two years as the historic building’s roof was repaired and its floors replaced.

Three generations of librarians — retired librarian Ann Sayers, Keene Library Director Aaron Miller and future librarian Alexa Dumas — were under one roof on Wednesday, re-shelving books in the library’s wood-paneled main room, chatting and prepping the library for its reopening celebration.

“This is a fresh start. It gave us an opportunity to clean out the space,” Miller said.

This library, one of two in a small town of roughly 1,000 residents, was built back in the early 1900s at a cost of $700 — equivalent to about $25,000 today. It was a labor of love; the culmination of a collaboration between Prestonia Mann Martin, a wealthy socialist woman who’d purchased an Adirondack estate in Keene with the goal of establishing a utopian summer community, and local folks like Keene native Wal Murray — who in addition to being a proprietor of Saranac Lake’s Riverside Inn and founder of the Saranac Lake Light, Heat and Power Company, donated the land upon which the Keene library now stands.

It’s because of the library’s age that the building needed to undergo some repairs, Miller said.

Keene Public Library is seen here Wednesday, July 12. (News photo — Elizabeth Izzo)

The building is held up by four large wooden beams that only go as far as the floor — they aren’t buried in the ground, and there isn’t a good foundation, Miller said. It didn’t help that in 2011, the library was flooded when Hurricane Irene hit and a brook that runs behind the library overflowed. But these most recent repairs were necessary not because of the hurricane, Miller said. The structure had started to sag over time — the building’s roof was sagging between 6 to 8 inches in a couple of places. The library was also carpeted — moisture, mold and books aren’t a great combination, Miller pointed out. Keene is a small town with a limited budget, and for years, there were discussions within the community of whether the town needed two libraries, so some of these larger, structural repairs were put off until recently.

With help from a $97,000 Library Construction Grant from New York state and bond funding from the former Upper Jay Methodist Church, the Keene Public Library will be reopening with a new roof and a new commercial-grade laminate floor. More work will be done in the future: The bathroom will be upgraded and the library plans to get some new bookshelves, too. This could require more fundraising, but Miller is optimistic that the community will rally together to support these upgrades.

In a way, the building’s reopening this Saturday will be the library’s first real return to normalcy since the coronavirus pandemic hit.

Miller, a Keene Valley native, took over as director of the library in 2017. He said in the leadup to 2020, the library was gaining momentum, doubling its patronage, expanding its offerings and diversifying its collection.

“We live in an area that’s fairly homogeneous, so I think giving people an opportunity to read things from authors with different perspectives is very important,” he said.

Retired librarian Ann Sayers reshelves books on Wednesday, July 12 ahead of the reopening of the Keene Public Library on Saturday, July 15. (News photo — Elizabeth Izzo)

Plus, the patrons of the Keene library were expressing interest in a broader range of titles from more diverse authors, he said.

“A library is an open space to everybody,” Miller said. “Not just with the collection that we built here over time, but also just the way that we welcome all members of the public to come in and be in a non-judgemental, open space where you can quietly have conversations about things but more just to feel welcome and to feel like this is a civically-valuable environment.”

When the coronavirus pandemic hit, the library was forced to close its doors for six months, though they continued to circulate books by pick-up and inter-library loan, Miller said. In April of 2021, a building inspector told the staff at Keene Public Library that they could continue to operate through the spring and summer, but advised against staying open in the winter because of the state of the building.

“You could feel it as you were walking around. The floor was uneven. It’s an old building,” Miller said.

In the fall of 2021, the library closed its doors for construction. Mobile bookshelves were pushed to the side, books were removed from built-in bookcases, and the staff of the Keene Public Library moved around 400 books from its collection of approximately 9,000 books to the Keene Valley Library, about 5 miles down state Route 73.

This Saturday, the reopening event will run from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. There will be grilled hotdogs and other treats, door prizes and contests, according to Miller.

With the reopening celebration, it’s seeing the library’s patrons that Miller is most looking forward to.

“Reacquainting ourselves with our community … that’s the most important thing,” he said.

With this first phase of renovations now complete, Miller is looking toward the future. He hopes to see the library evolve even further, and its building made more energy efficient. He hopes to see the installation of a climate-controlled and fireproof room for their archives sometime in the future. He wants to try to convert the library’s bathroom into an ADA-compliant space, and he’s excited to see if there’s a way the library can collaborate with the new Little Peaks Preschool and Early Childhood Center down the street.

He’s also looking forward to getting back to serving the community in this particular library’s own way, which includes helping seniors with technology questions and connecting members of the community with local, county and state resources, in addition to giving students information about getting into trades.

“Every library has its own personality,” Miller said.

Miller and Sayers also see the future in people like Dumas, 21, an assistant clerk who splits her time between the Keene and Keene Valley libraries and who sees herself becoming a school librarian and a children’s book author.

“I like the access to information you have. Anything you might be interested in, a library can provide for you,” Dumas said. “Also, when it comes to diverse literature, seeing yourself represented or seeing others represented, learning about people outside your own perspective is really nice. And I’m also a really big reader, so I like libraries because I just like books.”

The Keene Public Library will be open Monday through Thursday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., starting next week.