Dear Reader, have you ever noticed that sometimes you really didn't know how badly you needed something until AFTER you received it? That's how we feel right now - our big lighting project is finally complete - and boy, did we ever need it!
All we can say is, WOW! The whole Children's Room has received a fresh look thanks to brand-new, energy-efficient, bright-white lighting, crisp-white ceiling tiles, and a new coat of paint (not an inch was missed!). We have heard a lot of OOOOOOOOs and AAAAAAAHHHHs and, "The room looks so big!" (it really does) and, "Have you always had TREES?!" (yes).
Our Children's Room and our Program Room have been discombobulated since September; book browsers, tweens, and storytime families were great sports as we progressed through various phases and stages where whole sections of the room were behind plastic and the majority of our materials were in the Program Room (including our toys and giraffes). Thank you for your patience during the project. Our storytime friends even followed us into LAB 316 in the Adult Room for the entire Fall Session. While we have had a lot of fun being NOISY (singing, dancing, drumming ...) in the Adult Room, we will all be happy to be back in our regular space for storytime starting in January.
The only change to the room itself was the removal the Quiet Reading Stairs. We know that many families enjoyed playing there and we promise something special will replace the stairs. We will have more information about that Very Soon. Promise.
Factual Tidbit: The lighting in the Children's Room was dated back to the 1996 remodel; some of our lighting was no longer supported by manufacturers so as the lights went out ... they stayed out. Some of them held on for a long, long, long time - flashing intermittently - which was a bit, well, not awesome. The Adult Room's lighting/ceiling was updated during the recent transformation in 2019. Now Children's matches the Adult Room thanks in part to the Friends of HPL and the Library Foundation. We are grateful for the funding for this project.
If you haven't visited in a while, we invite you to come back and play, browse for materials, and enjoy this lovely, bright, happy, recombobulated space again.
