Foundation plans upgrades to Moses Lake library

MOSES LAKE — A fundraiser to pay for new and improved shelving at the Moses Lake Public Library on Saturday is part of an ongoing project to upgrade the facility.

The ultimate goal of the Moses Lake Public Library Foundation is expansion, said foundation president Tim Fuhrman, but that’s somewhere in the future. In the meantime the foundation is focusing on making the existing building more 21st Century-friendly.

The second annual Bagels for Books is one of a number of fundraising projects at the library this month, said Roxanne Southwood, Moses Lake branch manager and Grant County supervisor for the North Central Regional Library system. It’s scheduled for 9 to 11 a.m. March 18 at the Frontier Middle School cafeteria; an event preview was published in the March 7 addition of the Herald.

Fuhrman said the foundation had raised enough money to pay for the new and movable shelving in the children’s wing, the young adult section, videos and foreign language. The current shelves have been in place since 1965, when the library opened, and are just getting worn out, Fuhrman said.

The project was boosted by a donation from the Moses Lake Kiwanis chapter, which chose the library project as a recipient of funds from the club’s annual golf tournament, Fuhrman said. The tournament is put on jointly by Rotary and Kiwanis.

But the quirks of a 50-year-old building mean the project required some additional work. "The weird part is, the HV/AC runs behind the book stacks,” Fuhrman said. Installing new shelving will require upgrades to the heating-cooling system.

“The community loves the building,” Southwood said. But libraries have changed a lot since 1965, and the library needs to move with the times, she said. Services have changed. “They have changed,” Southwood said. “Tremendously.” The movable shelving allows spaces to be turned into “multi-function areas,” Fuhrman said.

The new shelving should be installed sometime this spring, he said, and the foundation’s next project will be replacing shelves in the fiction and nonfiction sections.

The foundation also works with the Friends of the Moses Lake Library. “They provide funds to enhance our program,” Southwood said. Money raised by the Friends pays for the summer reading program and Storytime for kids, among other programs.

Donations are accepted any time, Fuhrman said, and can be made at the foundation's website, mlplf.org.

Cheryl Schweizer can be reached via email at education@columbiabasinherald.com.

Editor’s note: This version shows the correct location of the event, which is the Frontier Middle School library.