By KATHLEEN WILSON

On Friday, Aug. 30 at 6 p.m., the Port Orchard Library will be closed for renovations until mid-October, and during the closure there won’t be any services at the Port Orchard branch. The outside book drop will be locked, the Wi-Fi will be inoperable, and the building will be inaccessible.

If you have books checked out from the Port Orchard Branch we are requesting that you hold onto those books during the remodel time period.  Please call us to renew your books if they’re due in August — they will renew through early November.  Please note: this only applies to books checked out from the Port Orchard Branch.

In fact, you can help us with our renovations. Come down to the library this month and check out as many nonfiction books as you can handle (up to 100) to take home and keep until early November.

The more non-fiction we have checked out, the fewer books we’ll have to move when we close our doors on Aug. 30

If you like garage sales, our Friends of the Library will be having a large surplus sale on Sunday, Sept. 1. The library will be closed, but the group will be on the front lawn from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. and have numerous furnishings as well as books that will be for sale.

All proceeds benefit the Friends of the Library, so if you’re in the market for some bookshelves or perhaps an old chair — don’t miss out on this one.

The library will reopen with new carpeting, new paint, some new furnishings, and a complete rearrangement to the front end of the building. During the renovations I’ll be posting photos of our progress frequently to the KRL Facebook Page, as well as to our branch homepage at www.krl.orgport-orchard.

We’ve been fielding a lot of questions about what will happen during the renovation.

These range from the practical: “What will happen to the books I have checked out?” (A: All books checked out from Port Orchard after Aug. 9 will not be due back until the beginning of November).  To the concerned “Will staff be laid off during the renovations?” (A: No. All staff will continue to work their normally scheduled hours at other branches or in other departments.)

Hopefully all questions are answered in our closure FAQ on our website, but if you have any additional questions feel free to contact me at kwilson@krl.org.

This project has been a long time in the making and wouldn’t have been possible without help from numerous community partners, including the Port Orchard Friends of the Library, the Port Orchard and South Kitsap Rotary Clubs, Kitsap Bank, the City of Port Orchard, The Kitsap Regional Library Foundation and numerous donations, large and small, from our wonderful patrons.

We’re hoping our new arrangement will make better use of the space, while providing a more enjoyable experience for our patrons.  The way Americans are using public libraries is changing rapidly, your community library is now much more

than a place to find books, and it’s our goal with these renovations to meet the changing needs of our community.