SALISBURY — Ten years ago in October, Salisbury Public Library officials opened the doors to their brand new building. Now, the library staff is preparing to celebrate the past decade.
In honor of the milestone anniversary, the library will hold a week’s worth of festivities from Oct. 6-11.
Throughout the week, there will be giveaways, daily raffles, displays and items visitors can take pictures with.
Then, on Oct. 11, the library will host an open house to officially celebrate its anniversary.
According to Joan Cox, Salisbury Public Library assistant director, the open house will feature a slideshow of historic pictures, caricatures, cupcakes and more.
Cox said there is no limitation on who can attend or participate in the week’s activities and encourages everyone to visit.
“It’s for everybody. Anybody who wants to. We’re making it so anytime during week people can drop in and see something happening. You don’t have to even be a library patron or a Salisbury resident. We just want to welcome everybody to come in,” she said.
When reflecting on the difference a decade has made, Cox said the larger building has transformed what the library can offer its patrons.
“We are able to accommodate a lot more, compared to our old, small library, accommodate more people and more events. At our old library we only had two computers that patrons could use, and now we have 12 patron computers and we have Wi-Fi, which is a really big thing here that patrons use a lot,” she said.
Reference librarian Kristen Packer echoed Cox’s statements and said the new building has opened up a world of possibilities for librarygoers.
“It makes me so happy that this is a welcoming space for all of them. We have study rooms that people are benefitting from using. And, we have the big meeting room downstairs that we can hold events in, and in our old library we couldn’t do anything like that for people,” she said.
As the library staff looks to the future, Cox said they hope to stay on top of what their patrons needs are and become even more educated on technology.
“We’re always looking forward trying to stay on top of those kinds of technology so we can assist people with them. We do that a lot here. Books are still a big thing here too, but moving forward with technology, we always try to stay on top of what’s new and what people are looking for but still in a library setting,” she said.