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Pennsylvania Town Helps Restore Libraries Hit by KatrinaA group of volunteers from State College, Pennsylvania, spent three days in early January helping to restore the Long Beach (Miss.) Public Library, one of the libraries hit hard by Hurricane Katrina in August. This was the second visit by a team from the Katrina Reconstruction Task Force, which has pledged to rebuild public facilities in rural parts of Mississippi and Alabama. A group of 17 workers, many of them students from Pennsylvania State University, first came down in November to assess the damage.KRTF’s Perry Babb said in the January 6 Biloxi Sun Herald that the 10 volunteers who visited the library January 3–5 cleared out every square inch of the building, ripping up moldy carpet and Sheetrock, and removing warped wooden shelving. Another team is scheduled to come down in March to help with mold remediation and begin renovations. “It’s just unbelievable,” LBPL Director Jeannie Ripoll told the Sun Herald. “They gave up everything to come down here and help people they’ve never met.” She said that more than 20,000 of the library’s 60,000 books were salvaged. The Schlow Centre Region Library in State College is donating its older shelves, desks, and chairs to the relief effort, and Long Beach will receive about half of the furnishings, the State College Centre Daily Times reported December 24. Schlow Director Betsy Allen said the library had planned to sell the old furniture, dating from the 1960s and 1970s, after building renovations were completed in October 2005, until trustees decided to donate it to the Katrina project. Beth Peters, a Penn State junior who helped in the clean-up effort in November, wrote in the December 10 Daily Times: “Few things I have ever done have been as wonderful as those few days of working, packing books, cleaning out the grime, and preparing for the restoration of that library. Few things I have seen have been as moving as the tears and thanks in the librarian’s eyes.” Ripoll said the hurricane had depleted much of the library’s tax base, but with the furniture donation and the volunteers’ help, she hoped that the library could reopen by the end of the summer. Posted January 6, 2006. |
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