Content area
Full Text
REPLACING THE LIBRARY GIVES A WASHINGTON COMMUNITY AN OPPORTUNITY TO RECYCLE A BUILDING IN A MOST UNUSUAL WAY.
We'll take the old Belfair library. Just put it on a barge and float it to Hoodsport." That was the running joke Hoodsport Library Supervisor Nancy Triplett kept alive for over a year. She was more surprised than anyone when it really happened.
Triplett had been at the tiny Hoodsport library for a couple of years and was very vocal in her advocacy for a new facility. There had been close calls in the past. At one time, a site had been selected and an offer made for a property. The appraisal for the site came in $40,000 less than the asking price, however, and the deal was off.
Meanwhile, the district had begun making plans to replace a 3,600-square-foot library it owned in Belfair, a community at the other end of Hood Canal in Washington's Puget Sound. Plans for the new library called for the demolition of the old one. It was from those plans that Triplett got her running joke.
With the community behind us
The library district's budget for 1996 did include a commitment to purchase property in the Hoodsport area for a future library site. Although our search for property thus far had been unsuccessful. we knew that we would find one sooner or later. As it turned out, it was to be much sooner.
"Jim, chech into it." These four words to me from Lewis County Trustee Bill Lawrence set the project in motion.
A meeting of the Timberland Regional Library (TRL) board of trustees is usually a small affair attended by seven or eight staff members and a handful of local library supporters. The March 1996 meeting in Hoodsport was quite a differnt story.
Close to 100 area library users turned out to let the board know how important their library was to them. After they warmed us up with a wonderful potluck dinner and good company, they let us have it with both barrels. We heard loud and clear how small and crowded their library was. We also got the message that they expected more than just lip service about their situation.
After a lengthy discussion about the shortcomings...