The Haines Borough Public Library will upgrade its community room, increase internet capacity, add new e-books and purchase more lending materials after receiving $33,000 in American Rescue Plan Act grant funding.
The federal grants are funded by the Institute of Museum and Library Services and roughly $2.2 million went to the Alaska State Library. The State Library awarded two grants to Haines’ public library.
The library will use a $27,000 grant to upgrade the community room by replacing the divider with a sound-dampening system, replacing and upgrading the sound system, installing a SmartBoard with conferencing capability to facilitate Zoom and in-person meetings and buying COVID-19 mitigation touchless card readers for fee payments and donations. The library currently only accepts fee payments in cash at the front desk.
Library director Carolyn Goolsby said upgrades will allow private meetings to take place in the community room that, because of pandemic restrictions, can’t take place in the conference room.
“We’re really excited about this,” Goolsby said. “Since we can’t use the conference room for private groups, it’s important to have that space for the community. We’ve been wanting to do something like this since the pandemic started.”
A $6,000 grant will go toward buying a new firewall to make the library’s internet more secure, handle increased traffic and an Overdrive account to house e-books. Nearly half of that grant will go toward purchasing physical lending materials.
Goolsby applied for the grants in September. The library has a year to spend the funds.
“We plan to get on it as soon as we can,” Goolsby said.
The American Rescue Plan Act, also known as the COVID-19 stimulus package, was a $1.9 trillion economic stimulus bill passed by Congress last spring and signed into law in March.