Nervous energy pulsed through me on Wednesday morning, but I wasn’t really affected by it since I was exhausted by an almost three-hour end of the school year party with my Anime Club on the last day of school the night before. The nervous energy was that the moving company smartly hired by our district to move our books from the old library to the new library was arriving that morning. It was going to take two days. And we were ready to roll up our sleeves, directing and organizing as they moved them back and forth.

What should have taken two days ended up taking a little less than one because they sent extra guys and our collection of around 15,000 was tiny compared to others they have moved using their custom made rolling bookshelves. So maybe it was the speed of what was happening or that it’s been 15 good years in that space that I couldn’t stop for more than a few minutes in the old library before I began to tear up.

This same exact thing happened when my husband and I started a home renovation that included knocking down the back half of our house. Yes I knew it was happening, heck, we paid people to take the wrecking ball to it and it was still a powerful few moments of emotion actually seeing it happen. We knew we were on to better things. And this is the case in the library. We are returning to a library fit for 2,600 students after being chipped away for more than a decade leaving it a shell of what it was when it was originally build in the 1970s. Yes, it had been rehabbed once about eight years ago when the floors and ceilings needed to be redone, but then the capital project began to build a campus for our students on the property.

And as we spend the next two weeks moving everything else over now that the books are moved in addition to cleaning up the books themselves, there have been moments over the last two days and will sure enough happen today, when I stop and take it all in. We are still waiting on the furniture and computers, including in our office so I know another wave will take me when that comes in.

I’m also filled with genuine pride when staff (who see the open construction door and walk over to take a look and then tell more colleagues to come over too) say things like “You deserve this” and “I have to take pictures, no one will believe how beautiful and big it is”. It’s what the students deserve after years of having the walls literally closing in on them. In addition to four study rooms, there are bathrooms and water fountains inside the library, space to spread out, and an updated look that everyone says makes them feel like they’re in a college library. It certainly does look like one and I look forward to retiring- still many years away- out of this spectacular space with so much natural light, I could probably grow a full garden inside!

More pictures to come and a final post when everything is in!