Wicomico Public Library hopes to begin renovations on the old Ward Museum along Schumaker Pond for a new facility by the end of the year.
Delmarva Public Media's Don Rush talked with executive director Seth Hershberger and Marty Neat, chair of the Library Friends Foundation, on their public capital campaign and what the facility and will look like.
The public capital campaign for renovation at the Old Ward Museum to become the new Wicomico Public Library is now underway. This is Don Rush. The total project is expected to cost nearly $14 million. Wicomico County and the State Library of Maryland have kicked in nearly 10 million with an additional 4.5 million from private donations. In this excerpt from this week's Delmarva Today, we talk with Marty Neat, chair of the Library Friends Foundation.
“At this point, our goal was 4.5 million. We're at about 90% of that goal at this point. We've been conducting what we call a silent campaign over the past six months, and that's basically before you go public, you want to make sure that a campaign is going to work. And so the rule of thumb in fundraising is you try to raise 70 to 90% of your ultimate goal in the private and the silent phase of the campaign. And we've been very gratified with the business response, the business community response. The individual families have stepped forward. The local foundations have stepped forward in a very big way. As I said, we're about 90% where we need to be. Now, that being said, we still have $300,000 or more, plus some other costs that we want to help to cover, to go in the public phase of the campaign. And that's a lot of money too. So we're not taking this for granted. We're going to have a very active public campaign over the next few months. Seth wants to start building in late this year, and we need to have the money to help that happen,” Neat said.
The project has been long in the planning with the decision to move the facility from its downtown location. Seth Hershberger, executive director of the Wicomico Public Library on the building itself.
“That building was set up with lots of galleries and displays as a museum and very little natural light in large areas of the building as well. And obviously, we also knew that the mechanical systems needed to be entirely upgraded. The HVAC had failed, and the electrical also needed to be entirely updated, so there was going to be a major expense with all that. But that's part of what we did yesterday, was unveil those designs for the first time. But we've added a lot of windows, opened up a lot of large spaces, created those unique areas in libraries that are really important to the community, like meeting rooms, spaces for teens. We're going to be across the street from a high school, a really great children's area that we're excited about because that's really a part of our core constituency is families with young children, and we want to make sure the library is really great for them,” Hershberger said.
How has the library and its function changed?
“There have been a lot of changes in the way people use libraries, and one of the most obvious things is all the digital content that we provide access to. And we have a lot of patrons who don't come in very often, but are very frequent users because they're jumping on our website, they're downloading eBooks or digital audiobooks directly to their device. If it were a branch, that branch that distributes digital content would be our second largest by far. And we're glad to serve those folks and we'll continue to do that. But as I said earlier, we love books and we have a lot of people in our community that love traditional books, book books, the kind that you actually turn the pages, and it's that physical experience of reading as well. We're glad that we can provide that. I think especially for families with young children, it's important because that tactile experience of having an object, turning the pages, is really important for helping children learn and develop the habit of reading that will serve them for a lifetime in terms of enriching their quality of life and also allowing for that continuing education throughout their life. And we especially love the people that we get to see that come in and check out the books,” Hershberger finished.
Seth Hershberger, executive Director of the Wicomico Public Library, and Marty Neat, chair of the Library Friends Foundation. The full interview can be heard on this Friday's Delmarva Today at noon on WSDL and WESM, this is Don Rush for Delmarva Public Media.
