On the strength of four entries, the Edgartown library won five state awards for excellence last month from the Massachusetts Library Association.
At the association’s annual convention in Springfield, the library won awards in every category it had entered, plus a special statewide honor as well.
The annual contest involves academic, public, school and special libraries across the state. Small communities like Edgartown compete against much larger urban facilities like those of Newton and Cambridge.
Edgartown Public Library children’s librarian Deborah MacInnis counts herself as an astronomy fan. On her desk is a color photograph of Comet Hale Bopp which she shot herself years ago. And she has fond memories of getting the late Edgartown resident Maxamina Mello up before dawn to see Halley’s Comet in 1986, knowing that the 85-year-old woman had seen it as a youngster 70 years before.
But it took much more than enthusiasm for Mrs. MacInnis to become the NASA-certified guardian of some bona fide moon rocks.
Edgartown Library is raffling off a basket of Valentine treats on Friday, Feb. 13 at 4 p.m. Tickets are $3 each, two tickets for $5, or ten tickets for $20. The tickets make nice Valentine’s Day gifts themselves, and sales will support the library expansion program.
At a meeting Monday, the Edgartown Library building committee discussed three early-stage construction options for a new town library: renovating the Carnegie building and adjacent Warren House; renovating the old Edgartown School, and renovating only the Carnegie building with a small addition on the back. The last two options would include the sale of the Warren House.
The Edgartown Library building committee hit yet another bump in the road this week when the town historic district commission said it will not allow the Warren House to be torn down.
The building committee’s latest plan calls for razing the historic colonial-era house and replacing it with a parking lot for the expanded and renovated library at the Carnegie building on North Water street
But after meeting on Tuesday with the historic district commission, that plan, like others before it, now must be scrapped.
The Edgartown Library building committee voted yesterday to abandon plans for a new North Water street site in favor of demolishing the old Edgartown School and starting anew.
An unexpected spike in project costs for the Edgartown Public Library expansion project left library trustees scrambling for a solution this week, as a plan to ask town voters for $4 million was scrapped when it was discovered that the actual need would be significantly higher.
At a Wednesday meeting of the Edgartown financial advisory committee, library trustees said that they would need closer to $5.4 million from the town by this coming June to secure a $4.6 million grant from the Massachusetts board of library commissioners.
Felicia Cheney, director of the Edgartown Free Public Library, will resign from her position at the top of the stacks, she announced at a Monday library trustees meeting.
“It was the right time for me to do it,” Ms. Cheney said when reached by phone Tuesday. The time frame for her last day on the job will be discussed at the Dec. 19 trustees meeting, she said.
The board of the Martha’s Vineyard Preservation Trust has voted to explore the acquisition of the building that now houses the Edgartown library.
By SARA BROWN
The board of the Martha’s Vineyard Preservation Trust has voted to explore the acquisition of the building that now houses the Edgartown library.
Chris Scott, executive director of the preservation trust, said the board voted unanimously at its meeting Friday, Dec. 9, to accept the library design committee’s invitation to play a role in deciding the fate of the library, a historic building that was financed by philanthropist Andrew Carnegie.
