Director's Letter

I ordered the last book of the fiscal year today! Well, not really--but mostly! I'm sure I'll still pick up a few odd patron requests and breakaway hits, but the book budget has been spent for FY23. Why? I thought you'd never ask!

Publishers like to know roughly how many people are going to buy their books before they start printing to avoid the risk of over- or under-producing. If they overproduce, they waste money on unwanted copies. If they underproduce, they lose sales and waste money having to reset equipment for unscheduled additional printings. To get it right, they do two things:

First, publishers provide reviewers with advance copies so that magazines like Kirkus and Library Journal can publish reviews months in advance. Since these (and others like them) are the tools we use for purchasing, we're always reading ahead.

Second, publishers offer deep discounts on pre-orders. I can order books in Baker and Taylor as soon as publication has been announced, and the discounts are often much better in pre-order periods than they are at the time of publication. Getting a jump on the gun can be the difference between a 41% discount and an 18% discount. James Patterson already has books scheduled for publication on 6/05...and 6/13...and 7/03...and 7/10...and 8/14... Other authors and series have contracts that go as far out as scheduled publications in 2027!

As a municipal department, though, I have to hit the reset button every year on June 30. Any bills accrued in FY23 (up to the end of June) have to be payed before a strict deadline, and any books I order before July 1 count as FY23. To be safe, I put anything published after June 26 into an FY24 cart and don't order it until July 1. Then, on June 26, I cancel every book order that is still outstanding and add it to that FY24 cart to keep invoices from straggling in after the legal deadline to pay them. Hence, as of today, I have ordered my last book of FY23. As of this moment, we have 149 titles on order to see us through till June 30, and 208 waiting to be ordered on July 1.

Thanks for Reading,

--Justin Snook

Book and Plant Sale

The Friends of the Simon Fairfield Public Library wish everyone a happy Memorial Day.

On May 27th, from 9:00 am to noon, they will be selling books and plants either in front of the Library or inside of it, depending on the weather. Proceeds from the sale will be added to the Library’s building fund, where it will be invested until it can be used make our Library accessible.

There will be boxes and boxes of books that have been donated by patrons or weeded from the Library collection. Please peruse them and adopt liberally!

If you have plants you would like to donate, there is a collection of communal pots behind the Library which you can borrow for potting your donations. Please bring them back to the Library with a label of some sort on May 25 or 26. Just place them out back and we will take care of the rest.

Friends Donate $3,035 Building Fund as Trustees Embark on Building Program

On April 29, the Friends of the Library approved a budget for 2023 that includes all the normal requests as well as a markedly increased programming budget. So expect more art events this fall! The Friends also donated their surplus funds to the Library’s capital campaign, bringing the total amount in our combined building funds to $161,212.42!

Donations to our capital campaign are especially important and valued right now. The Trustees of the Library have taken a significant step toward building renovation by engaging the services of a building specialist who will be working with us over the summer to prepare a document called a Library Building Program. June and July will see a lot of surveying, focus groups, public forums, and invitations for input from the community to determine the next steps for 290 Main Street. Stay tuned!

Upcoming Book Clubs:

 - TONIGHT, 6:30pm -- Greatest Book Club Ever: Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grann
 - May 9, 6:30pm -- Intrepid Readers: Capital Dames by Cokie Roberts
 - May 11, 4:00pm -- Book Wizards: I Must Betray You by Ruta Sepetys
 - May 16, 6:30pm -- SciFi Book Club: Memory's Legion by James S. A. Corey
 - April 25, 3:30pm -- Book Bunch: Belle's Journey by Richard Bierregaard

See our calendar for more events and more details!

Bits & Pieces with Rebecca Lavallee: Historic Districts Part 2

April’s Bits & Pieces covered different types of Historic Districts and the various impacts on the homeowner. This month, we are going to look at the history of Historic Districts in Douglas.

In 1986, the Douglas Historic Commission was reactivated. Upon its reactivation, the first order of business was to complete a state requirement to produce a town-wide inventory. Following the guidelines of the Massachusetts Historic Commission, the inventory’s purpose was “…to identify and research all structures over fifty years of age as well as any other areas of historical significance. (burial grounds, monuments, streetscapes, Indian sites, archaeological sites, etc.)” With the help of a professional historical consultant team, this project was completed in 1989 and the full report, Inventory of historic properties in Douglas, Massachusetts, 1989 by John Belding, can be found at the Simon Fairfield Public Library. (A quick side note – along with the works of Lucius Marsh, this report is one of the most referenced items in the archive.)

With the completion of the town-wide inventory, the Historic Commission hoped to set up two distinct Historic Districts:

District I – Old Douglas Center : included the First Congregational Church, the Old Town Common, and the Douglas Center Cemetery.

District II – Downtown Douglas : included the Second Congregational Church, the Simon Fairfield Public Library and the E.N. Jenckes Store.

The initial plan was to create Local Historic Districts. As discussed in the previous article, Local Historic Districts require that a bylaw is passed by two-thirds majority at a town meeting. An informational meeting regarding this bylaw was held in 1990 and was met with negative feedback from the townspeople. Once it was determined that a Local Historic District was unlikely, the Historic Commission moved to create National Register Districts, which do not impose restrictions on homeowners.

As of 1990, the only property in town that was registered was the E.N. Jenckes Store (283 Main Street), which was added to the register in 1987. The store is a single, private building that was originally an early 19th century general store that became a museum and home of the Douglas Historical Society. The following year, the Hayward Mill (26 North Street) was placed on the National Register of Historic Places. The Hayward Mill is considered to be a private district of 4 contributing structures. From 1880 until 1946, the Hayward Mill was involved in the woolen industry, with one of its most relevant times being production during World War II. After the closing of the mill, the Mr. Christmas Company owned and used the building for several years. And then in the early 1990s, the complex was developed into apartments that are today known as Hayward Landing.

It wasn’t until 2001 that the Douglas Historic Commission registered their first District, Old Douglas Center. Old Douglas Center is a mix of 60 private and public-local properties that include buildings, burial sites, structures and objects between 1746 and 1951. By registering the Old Douglas Center on the National Register, tax credits for restoration and reuse are now available to income producing properties. It also increases public awareness of this significant piece of Douglas history.

Today, the goal of the Historic Commission is to have Downtown Douglas listed in the National Historic Register. On the next Bits & Pieces, we will look into what that actually entails.

Goodbye, Old Friend. Hello, Hot Water.

In August, 1982, the Library's boiler broke. A new one was needed before winter set in, and the trustees at the time had to use the book budget to buy it. As a consequence, no books were purchased from December 1982 through June 1983. Town Meeting in June 1983 unanimously appropriated $2,500 to add to the Library's FY84 budget to make up for it. Patrons just had to wait a long time for new releases that year...

That boiler gave us 40 years of heat and hot water. It suffered a bit of an identity crisis in it's last half-decade because in 2018, we installed hyper-heat mini-splits thanks to a Green Communities Compact grant that rendered it redundant as a heat source. We kept it around as a backup, but it never proved necessary. It also provided hot water, but at a very high cost of operation...and in March, it stopped doing that.

Repairing a 40 year old boiler we don't use didn't make sense. Replacing it with a new one we wouldn't use also didn't make sense. So on April 28, 2023, Sochia's took it away along with the giant oil tank in the archive. Now we have hot water, space to install janitorial shelves in the furnace room, even more space to install additional shelving in the archive, and no more oil bill!