It wasn’t looking good for the Elizabeth Taber Library Annual Book Sale coming up next week when, on Friday, July 15, staff discovered water pouring down from the ceiling of the basement room where donated books were being stored for the annual fundraiser.
The library staff at first thought it was a burst pipe raining water down onto a section of books donated from the community to the library but, come to find out, it was a clog in the sewer line that had water backed up and spilling out all over the books, as well as toilets overflowing.
The library closed early on Friday, and it remained closed on Saturday as well as on Monday so that town facilities workers could dig up the front lawn of the library to fix the clog.
“Thankfully, it wasn’t as bad as we originally thought,” said Library Director Libby O’Neill. “We acted quickly and brought the books outside. Some of them we were able to dry off. Somewhere between one hundred and two hundred books were lost.”
Luckily, said O’Neill, the library receives book donations throughout the entire year, so a good number of books are still available to be sold at the Annual Book Sale, the library’s largest fundraiser of the year, going on at the Marion Music Hall on July 29.
O’Neill wasted no time getting the word out that the library needed more book donations to make up for the loss, and the community responded by replacing the lost books twofold.
“The community has done a great job hearing our message,” said O’Neill. “We have so many book donations coming in from the community, and we are so grateful for that.”
Marion Facilities Manager Shaun Cormier said the library, much like the other historic buildings in town, still has the old clay pipes and sewer lines underground. When the Sewer Department on Monday began snaking the backed-up pipe from the street, they found the clog was located right between the two locust trees on the property. The root system damaged the pipe and one of the two trees had to be cut down.
The old sewer line was replaced with an updated PVC pipe.
As for the book donations, O’Neill said that this year, thanks to the generosity of the community, the book sale might have more books available for sale than the previous year, despite this “little set-back,” as O’Neill put it.
By Jean Perry