Abbot Public Library officially reopened at Eveleth
By Ryan Vermette
Marblehead Weekly News
After months of planning, Abbot Public Library has made its temporary transition to the Eveleth School on 3 Brook Road where it will call the building home until spring of 2024.
Despite the amount of preparation and problem solving needed for the huge move, Library Director Kimberly Grad said the transition went smoothly.
“It’s been tremendous, a lot of work, a lot of planning, a lot of logistics, and a lot of troubleshooting,” Grad said. “We fit everything in that we needed to fit and then some.”
Back in August, Grad stated that about 40 percent of the library’s reading materials would make the trip to the school due to not having enough space, however Grad was pleasantly surprised when they were able to bring more content into the school than originally thought. She estimated that the library was able to bring closer to 50 percent of the content over, which was a nice increase that she did not plan on having.
“We’re really pleased to see how much we were able to fit in here,” Grad said.
As visitors walk in, a number of bookshelves can be immediately seen from a short balcony where they can then walk down a set of stairs to search for books by genre. To the right is a kids room, and on the left after passing the reception desk is a hallway that is hugged by more bookshelves on each side.
Walking further down the hall, there is a teen room as well as a program room that can hold events up to 49 people according to Grad. After a short hiatus of about a month, the library’s programs will start right back up again on Nov. 1 starting with Story Time Yoga with Lindsey Kravitz that invites children and their caregivers to come to a series of stretching and yoga that will be taught through song and storytelling from 10:30 a.m to 11 a.m.
As the month goes on, the library has a number of events and programs coming up for every and all age groups and more information on these events can be found on the library’s website under the events tab.
With most of the focus now turning from the move-in to helping the library gain exposure at its new location, Grad states that getting the word out is the next step in the transition process.
“That’s part of the engine that’s starting to churn again now is to get publicity up and running,” she said.
With the new location, Grad and other staff members have been giving visitor tours of the building as most people are not familiar with the school’s layout, helping them get accustomed to the temporary space.
Although it’s a new space, and a new look, the re-configuration and re-imagining of the school allowed for most of the library’s content, systems, and programs to be carried over. There are still some kinks to be worked out and there may be a few shelves that need to be moved here and there, but for the most part, Abbot Public Library hasn’t skipped a beat.
“We’re so pleased that we were able to offer a little bit of everything in the space,” said Grad. “We have collections that support all of the same interests that we had in the other building, we’re able to offer programs. I really don’t think there’s going to be a huge gap in what we can offer. I think there’s a lot of possibilities here.”