Smithtown Library's main branch to reopen Monday after devastating flood

After almost nine months of cleanup, repairs and safety inspections, the Smithtown Library will open its namesake branch on Monday with limited services.

Rob Lusak, the Smithtown Library director, said the building’s first floor will be accessible for public use and feature most of the amenities in place before August’s historic flooding. 

Doors will open at 9:30 a.m., and the library will operate at normal hours.

"We are very excited to welcome our community back," Lusak told Newsday through email on Tuesday.  "While we're not yet operating at full-service capacity, our reopening shows that the Library has made significant progress in the rebuilding process and we sincerely appreciate our community's continual patience and support."

Patrons will be able to check out books and audiovisual materials from a limited collection. The library will also set up new computers on the main floor instead of in their previous home in the basement.

"We were closed for eight months, so we don't have any [new] materials, so we've rearranged shelving," assistant director Eileen Caulfield recently told Newsday.

Staff from the Smithtown Library’s three other branches have been coming to the Smithtown branch in volunteer rotations for weeks to make dozens of first-floor shelves as presentable as possible, Caulfield said. For example, their New Bestsellers section is now the Science Fiction section.

"We've gotten creative with putting things on top of shelves," Caulfield said.

Patrons can also choose the Smithtown building as a pickup location when placing holds on library items. They will have direct access and browsing of new nonfiction and fiction collections, large print, the entire fiction collection, periodicals and limited DVD, Blu-ray, audiobooks and music CDs.

Public computer access, notary services, printing, copying, scanning and faxing will also be available, as well as its Patent & Trademark Resource Center.

In addition, children and teen's services rooms and collections will reopen and the Friends of The Smithtown Library Book Sale will be in operation. 

Community members have donated a slew of DVDs and CDs, helping make up for the 21,000 audiovisual items damaged in the catastrophic August floods. Floodwaters broke a now boarded-up basement window, threatening the integrity of the building and endangering a historical collection of Long Island documents.

Renovations to the library's gutted basement will take about another year to complete.

The flood also damaged the library’s elevator, which provided access to its mezzanine, first floor and basement. The mezzanine will be closed until the elevator is operating.

Community programming will continue at the Smithtown Library's three other branches in Kings Park, Nesconset and Commack.

Lusak said the library basement will host a new government services department, combining its passport and patent facilities with a depository library. It also will build a podcast room.

"Everything that we had on this main floor, we want to have that back up and running operational again," he said.