OAK VIEW : Expanded Library Reopens Today

The popular Oak View Library reopens today after a five-week closure that allowed carpenters to make it twice as large and more accessible to the handicapped.

Telephone callers to the branch Friday were greeted with the sounds of hammering and a cheery “Oak View Madhouse!” by Jane O’Hara of Ventura County Library Services.

Originally scheduled to reopen Tuesday, the doors are opening a day early to inaugurate new hours, O’Hara said. The new hours are 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. and 2 to 6 p.m., Monday through Friday. The library at 469 N. Ventura Ave. was formerly open on Saturday and closed on Monday.

Although the library will no longer be open on Saturdays, a grand reopening will be held from 10 a.m. to noon Saturday as scheduled.

The long-awaited expansion from 1,200 to 2,400 square feet is the result of a three-year lease that the County Board of Supervisors approved for the additional space from building owner Bert Dahl of Dahl’s Market in Oak View.

“We doubled the space, put in a new circulation desk and new carpeting,” O’Hara said.

“We’ve been in a very compressed space up to this point.”

Librarian Kit Willis said the extra room will be used for children’s storytelling and the county’s literacy program.

It will also house some of the branch’s 17,000 books.

Willis has developed a popular children’s program, O’Hara said, and the branch has the highest circulation rate, at 3,000 materials per month, of any small library in the county.

On Saturday, 20 members of the 40-man barbershop chorus, the Channel Island Clippers, will celebrate the roomy atmosphere with two sets of songs sandwiching a 30-minute marionette performance of “Forest Leaves” by the Alphabet Soup Puppeteers. Punch, coffee and homemade cookies will be served.