ABOVE: Books have been placed on shelves reconstructed in the new Sherburn Library at 21 East First Street, where they now share a building with the local police department and city hall.

SHERBURN – Sherburn Library has found itself in a bit of a pickle, as they have to move everything into a new building.

Martin County Library Director Jenny Trushenski said it happened when the city of Sherburn, which owns the old library building itself, brought a contractor in to check out the building.

“They had decided there were some liability concerns with the roof, and felt we needed to relocate the library,” she said.

That was a little over two weeks ago. The city was able to find a new space for the library to be, at 21 East First Street.

“The county provides the staff, books and computers,” Trushenski said. “The city has to provide a space for the library to be. That was the space the city of Sherburn had available to us, and we’re thankful they had a spot.”

When she was told by the city this needed to occur, Trushenski said she knew some things would need to be addressed.

“We need wiring for the computers,” she said. “We need to have internet in the building, those kinds of things. We’ve taken it as a step-by-step and got everything working to make it a fully fledged library building.”

In a short amount of time, Trushenski said they have been able to get quite a bit done thanks to the assistance of Sherburn Librarian Becky Tish, members of the City of Sherburn and a crew of Sentenced to Serve members led by Kyle Redenius.

“We have shelving from the prior building in the new building,” Trushenski said. “Some of the materials are there. We’ve been able to put those on the shelves. The electrical wiring is done. We’re getting ready to get our computers up and running for the public. Becky has been working on going through and clearing out craft supplies, office supplies, things like that, and getting those moved over.”

Even so, Trushenski said they still have a good amount to do.

“We need to get the rest of the furniture moved over,” she said. “Get our computers all hooked up and running and functioning, and get the rest of the materials up on the shelves. We’ve made big strides already this week, but it just takes a little bit of time.”

While the new building is a little smaller than their previous one, Trushenski said it is working out pretty well, and they don’t anticipate having to trim down or remove any of their programs or services.

They are already open in the new building from 3:30 to5:30 p.m., but a return to full 1:30 to 5:30 p.m. hours is anticipated for the end of this week or beginning of next week.

In getting this put together so quickly, Trushenski said it has been so important that everyone has worked really well together.

“Everybody’s helping out wherever they can, because we want to be sure people can access the library there,” she said. “It’s really important to the community to have a library there. We want to be able to have all of those services with as little disruption as possible. That was always the goal.”

Currently, she said the understanding is there is no plan to move back to the old building, and this will be a permanent change to this location.

In this transitional phase, Trushenski said there are several things people can do to show their support.

“Use the library,” she said. “Tell your local elected officials how important the library is to them. I think it’s important they hear that, that people are really thankful that the city was able to quickly find us another great location to be in. Please come in and check out the library.”