All they need are 10,000 books

Gilmanton Year-Round Library Association celebrates completion of privately funded facility

It was about 10 years ago that a group of local residents first became aware that their small town was one of only two in the state without a year-round library.

That began a long, hard but ultimately successful effort to bring modern year-round library services to Gilmanton.

On Saturday, members of the nonprofit Gilmanton Year-Round Library Association met with neighbors and friends to celebrate how far their work has come — and to look forward to the final steps of making the new library on Route 140 operational.

Elizabeth Bedard, who was part of that original group and now serves as president of the association, said she recalls how most people at that first meeting were surprised when they hard of Gilmanton’s unwanted distinction.

“We thought most New Hampshire rural towns didn’t have (year-round libraries),” she said. “We have three fantastic seasonal libraries — in the Ironworks, at the (Four) Corners and in Lower Gilmanton,” she added, but none of those provide residents with periodicals, free internet access, books on tape, meeting spaces or many of the other services of a modern library.

“We wanted to try to correct that, to fill the void,” she said.

Some of those residents met with an official with the New Hampshire State Library who asked them a very important question, Bedard recalled with a laugh. “He said, what do most of your townspeople think? And we thought, what do they think? Is this something that only concerns this group of about 25 people?”

Working with a consultant of the State Library, the group conducted a survey of residents and discovered that 94-percent of the 300 respondents not only considered year-round library service important, but 60 people cared enough to volunteer to become involved.

“Our first meeting we have 40 people show up,” Bedard said. ““That’s not bad when you consider we only had about 1,600 registered voters at the time.”

One of the first things the group did was form a site committee to locate the best place for a year-round library.

It quickly identified a five-acre lot across Rte. 140 from the Gilmanton School. “Then this piece of land came on the market three or four months later,” said Bedard. “We bought it for $50,000.”

The next step was to come up with a building plan. “We had a prominent library architect come in and brainstorm with us, then present us with several designs. We looked them over… It was a very nice building he’d designed but somehow the committee didn’t lock into it. We came to the conclusion that the typical municipal brick library didn’t belong on this rural field,” she explained.

Then one of the committee members mentioned seeing a magazine article about a barn that had been turned into a library.

The group loved the idea and began looking for such a structure. They found it — a 1770s hand-hewn wooden barn — in the seacoast town of South Hampton in 2004. “The farmer was going to take it down,” Bedard related. “There was a hole in the roof… We bought it, dismantled it, repaired it and reestablished it here.”

Today the land across from the town school is one of remarkable transformation. In the middle of the flat rural field is the barn, “re-raised” as a beautiful community library — with carpeted floors, a loft reading area, beautiful wood furniture, radiant heat, meeting space and room for six computers. The hand-hewn wooden beams from the original structure have been incorporated into the design. There’s a wonderful old-fashioned feeling but with a sense of modern conveniences.

And much of the project has come about by means of donations, Bedard said. “We’ve put about $600,000 to $700,000 into this but it’s estimated to be worth about $1.2-million. There’s been an overwhelming amount of volunteer labor and in-kind donations. The insulation was put in at no cost. The well was drilled at no cost. The (interior) painter, he did all his work at no cost.” In addition, the six new computers and the exterior work around the building were donated.

Now virtually all that’s needed are the books — about 10,000 from a list recommended by the State Library, according to Bedard. Towards that aim, the association will be accepting donations of books during the next four Saturdays, from 9 a.m. to noon. Books that are on the list will be incorporated into the library; those that aren’t will be sold and the funds used to get other books still needed.

Actually there’s still some more work to be done besides that, Bedard said. The committee is “selling” “naming rights” to certain sections of the structure and to the library itself.

The group is also hoping to create a $225,000 endowment that would allow the library to be self-funding in the future. “We’re looking at operating costs of about $75,000 to $100,000 every year and we hope to do it without costing the taxpayers any money,” Bedard said.

To reach those goals, the committee has placed advertisements in specialty magazines like The Harvard Review to find an appropriate donor, the president admitted with a laugh.

The association has not yet determined whether it will give the library over to the town when its work is done. It could continue to operate it independently, which would mean it would never become a taxpayers’ issue. The three existing, seasonal libraries receive a small amount of town funds each year.

“This committee takes it one step at a time,” Bedard said. “But this is a public library. It’s meant for the citizens for Gilmanton.”

For information on how to make a donation to the library, call 527-1007 or 528-1896, or go to the website, www.gyrla.org