Olive and Piper Sonderman, after checking out the newly renovated library, posed for a photo that could have been taken a century ago, under the shade of a tree with a couple of great, big books and the original library building in the background. —Amy Sonderman photo
The Ridgefield Library is back in the swing of things after a lively “grand opening weekend,” as crowds of people visited its new $20-million building and attended events Friday, Saturday and Sunday.
“I saw every inch of this place crawling with people, and overheard many appreciative comments,” said Library Director Chris Nolan.
A young boy, she said, was overheard saying, “I love this new library better than anyone else does!”
There were concerts and speeches, but the building itself was the star of the show.
“People love the light and air,” said Assistant Library Director Mary Rindfleisch. “The Teen Center and Technology Center were big hits, and the 3-D printer garnered 12 pages of sign-ups to hear about workshops and activities using it in the coming months. …
“The RFID-enabled self-check wowed people, and we showed hundreds of folks how to use it,” she said.
The new building’s “people counter system” wasn’t up and running, Ms. Rindfleisch said, so she couldn’t say how many people had come throughout the weekend.
But people are borrowing books, CDs, DVDs.
“On Saturday, 3,645 items were checked out, on Sunday (in only four hours of opening) it was 2,248,” Ms. Rindfleisch said. “The pace kept up into Monday with 3,283 items checked out.”
People also returned things they’d borrowed previously.
Ms. Rindfleisch said that “2,000 items were returned on Saturday, 2,449 on Sunday and 3,162 on Monday, giving the new automated handling system machinery a real baptism by fire.”
More than 200 people turned out in the rain for Friday’s “book brigade” moving the last books from the temporary library to the new one.
With the rain, it wasn’t quite enough to stretch all the way from the temporary Governor Street site to the new library on the corner of Main Street and Prospect Street.
So volunteers carried the books — all in plastic bags to protect them from the rain — up to Main Street and started the hand-passing brigade by Books on the Common.
“A young volunteer dressed in a costume of the Wild Thing from the Maurice Sendak classic led off the procession,” Ms. Rindfleisch said.
And the last book down the line was a copy of Where the Wild Things Are by the late Mr. Sendak, an honorary co-chair of the capital campaign. “This seemed a fitting tribute,” Ms. Rindfleisch said.