CAMDEN — On a sticky, pre-dawn July morning in 2011, Lisa Pickett stood on Harrison Avenue in downtown Camden watching flames consume the city’s library.
Pickett, the library’s director since 2007, grew up meandering through the aisles inside the old building, picking out her favorite books and getting lost within their crisp pages.
She joked on a recent afternoon that “they saw me there so much, they finally put me to work.”
Fire destroyed the library and most of its contents thatmorning, and while many in the community of 12,183 were saddened by the loss, Pickett said it devastated her.
“It was like losing a friend,” Pickett said, sitting in her office at the library’s temporary home in a former retail space in the Garden Oaks Shopping Center on Cash Road. “Just watching it go up in flames and knowing what all we were going to lose was a horrible feeling.”
A few blocks away, ground has finally been broken on a new library after a year-long search for a suitable property. Construction is to begin early this year, and within a year or so the library willonce again have a permanent home.
The final price tag on the new building hasn’t been determined, but there is about $2 million in insurance money that has been collected from the loss of the old library, Pickett said.
Pickett’s somber tone quickly disappeared when she began describing the new building, which will be double the size of the old library at about 10,000 square feet.
The new library will be full of the latest technology, as well, Pickett said. In the old building, there were just four public-access computers. In the new one, there will be 12.
Also, large public meeting and study rooms will be included, along with a selfcheckout feature.
Pickett said technology is an important feature of a library, since many patrons go there to do such things as file their taxes online.
“It will be nice to offer more computers and newer technology,” Pickett said. “For many people, we are their gateway to the online world. And they can ask for help if they aren’t sure where to go online. There are so many services that we offer.”
Those services are currently limited because of the cramped temporary home. And the library is still in the early stages of rebuilding its collection, 95 percent of which was lost to smoke and water damage.
Pickett stressed that “it is going to take time for us to grow into a new collection.”
On a positive note, Pickett said many of the community’s historic genealogical books and documents were saved from complete ruin. And donations have helped the library begin rebuilding its book collection.
“We have added about 4,000 books to our shelves since the fire,” Pickett said. “But we had around 50,000 before the fire. Everyone has been so helpful, from our patrons to our vendors. We will get back to where we were.”
Camden resident Sara Mitchell said the fire and the construction of a new library have given her both heartbreak and excitement.
“We have lost a wonderful library, and it was sad to see the structure go as it did, but it was becoming crowded,”Mitchell said. “We have the chance to start fresh, have plenty of room, and utilize more electronic equipment. Camden can be proud of the library and all the hard work put into the planning by the library board.”
Camden isn’t the only city in south Arkansas that’s building a library.
Thanks to a half-percent countywide sales tax passed in 2010, Monticello is also constructing a new facility to hold its book collection.
Judy Calhoun, director of the Southeast Arkansas Regional Library, which manages libraries in Monticello and other communities in that part of the state, said the $4.8 million, 20,000-squarefoot building will more than double the current Monticello Library space.
It will be on Main Street on the site of the former Drew County Memorial Hospital.
“We expect to have it completed in about a year, once construction is started early in 2013,” Calhoun said recently. “We are just ecstatic about it.”
Several other libraries have been built throughout the state over the past several years.
In 2009, a private grant provided funding for a new library in Mountain Home. Construction began on the $9.8 million facility after the Donald W. Reynolds Foundation awarded the funds to the Baxter County Library Foundation.
The 35,500-square-foot, two-story library, which opened in September 2010,was triple the size of the old facility.
In Phillips County, Helena-West Helena’s new 13,842-square-foot library also opened in September 2010, giving the community its first new library since 1891. The community renovated a former grocery store to house the library at a cost of $1.5 million.
In April 2009, Columbia County opened its new public library inside a renovated church building in Magnolia. The $1.1 million project was funded through a combination of grants and donations.
Also in 2009, the Central Arkansas Library System opened the Esther D. Nixon Library in Jacksonville. City residents approved a 1-mill property tax in 2005 for the library.
Maureen Sullivan, president of the American Library Association in Chicago, said libraries serve as the hub of many communities, especially smaller, more rural ones.
“Over the past several years, we have seen libraries become technological centers and business centers for people who are starting small businesses,” Sullivan said.
“And they are also, of course, homes to great collections of knowledge.”
As for the fire that destroyed Camden’s library, Sullivan called it a blessing in disguise.
“As devastating as the fire was, what a great opportunity this community has to build a new library that’s bigger and better than before,” she said.
“This is no doubt an exciting time there.”
Northwest Arkansas, Pages 7 on 01/02/2013