Corbin Library holding mammoth book sale to prepare for renovations

The Corbin Public Library is planning the mother of all booksales in preparation for the renovations to the annex building.

At Thursday’s regular meeting of the library board, Chair Brenda Jones explained that the first floor of the annex building had become the storage area for donated books.

With renovations scheduled to begin in mid-August, Jones said the books must be removed.

“We need to move a lot of books,” Jones said

Library Director Donna Chadwell said when donations come in, staff members go through them to determine what, if any of the books are suitable to be placed in circulation.

“Some of the books may be in poor condition. Others may be copies of books we already have,” Chadwell said in explaining why all of the books are not placed in circulation.

A group of volunteers from the Friends of the Corbin Public Library have been working to sort the books into one of three categories, fiction, non-fiction and children’s.

Once sorted, the books will be placed on rolling carts. The sale will begin Thursday and continue through the end of the month or until all of the books are gone.

Pricing will be very simple, $1 for a hardback, and 50 cents for a paperback.

The carts will be rolled to the seating area near the front entrance where patrons may browse through the available books.

“It is first come, first served,” Chadwell said adding there is no limit on the number of books that an individual may purchase.

Chadwell said proceeds from the sale will go to help purchase furnishings and equipment for the annex.

Immediate plans for the project include construction of a community room, conference room, staff office and café area on the first floor.

“It will be a place where people are welcome to sit and have a snack,” Chadwell said noting it will feature a series of vending machines.

The second floor will be gutted and new plywood flooring will be installed.

“We didn’t change any plans. We just had to make choices about what would be done initially,” Chadwell said noting that the new kitchen area, bathrooms and other parts of the $1.2 million project would be completed as funding becomes available.

The new conference room and the new community room will each be twice the size the library’s current facilities. The rooms will include partitions that will allow them to accommodate multiple events.

Plans call for the work to take five months to complete.

The library board had secured a $636,000 repayable grant from the Kentucky Department of Libraries and Archives to fund the project.

As part of the terms of the grant, the library had to put $100,000 of its own money toward the grant.

Chadwell told the board members that the funds were available in the library’s general fund account.

“We have stayed under budget enough over the last two years able to transfer money from operating fund to building fund,” Chadwell said.