Still well short of their goal to raise $4 million from private contributions to expand and renovate the Edgartown Public Library, town library trustees turned to the selectmen for help this week, asking them to place an article on the annual town meeting warrant for the money.
The trustees need to raise $4 million by next June in order to receive a matching grant from the Massachusetts board of library commissioners. To date trustees have raised just under $750,000.
Edgartown Public Library children’s librarian Deborah MacInnis counts herself as an astronomy fan. On her desk is a color photograph of Comet Hale Bopp which she shot herself years ago. And she has fond memories of getting the late Edgartown resident Maxamina Mello up before dawn to see Halley’s Comet in 1986, knowing that the 85-year-old woman had seen it as a youngster 70 years before.
But it took much more than enthusiasm for Mrs. MacInnis to become the NASA-certified guardian of some bona fide moon rocks.
On the strength of four entries, the Edgartown library won five state awards for excellence last month from the Massachusetts Library Association.
At the association’s annual convention in Springfield, the library won awards in every category it had entered, plus a special statewide honor as well.
The annual contest involves academic, public, school and special libraries across the state. Small communities like Edgartown compete against much larger urban facilities like those of Newton and Cambridge.
Edgartown Library is raffling off a basket of Valentine treats on Friday, Feb. 13 at 4 p.m. Tickets are $3 each, two tickets for $5, or ten tickets for $20. The tickets make nice Valentine’s Day gifts themselves, and sales will support the library expansion program.
The Edgartown library has been provisionally awarded $4.59 million as part of an omnibus bond bill that authorizes a total of $137.5 million for public library construction across the state.
The grant would help pay for an expansion project for the library on North Water street with a price tag of $15 million.
The library began action on the project in 2004 when the town agreed to buy the Capt. Warren house next door to the library on North Water street.
Edgartown library staffers were stepping over wet cement this week in an effort to ready the old Carnegie building on North Water street for its official reopening next Tuesday.
The sidewalk under repair is one thing that is not their problem — town highway superintendent Stuart Fuller is in charge of that project — but they have had their share of problems following last year’s furnace puffback incident. The building was closed in early December after a burst furnace covered much of the furniture, upholstery and stock in an oily vapor.