Santa Clarita / Antelope Valley : Improved Valencia Library Set to Reopen : Quake: Renovated facility includes new books, superior lighting and better accessibility for the handicapped.

Once the busiest of Los Angeles County’s 87 library outlets, Valencia Library has been closed since the Northridge earthquake toppled its shelves and ruptured its water pipes.

The site is scheduled to reopen at 11:30 a.m. Thursday, and patrons may find the temblor was the best thing to happen to the branch in its 22-year history.

“We’re back and we’re better,” said Evelyn MacMorres, library administrator for the north county region.

New books, improved lighting and better accessibility for handicapped patrons are among the Valencia Library’s windfall from the Jan. 17 quake.

A private insurance policy absorbed the bulk of the nearly $1 million in damage inflicted on the facility, said David Flint, assistant finance and planning director for the county library system. Most of the remaining costs will be covered by the earthquake recovery funds from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

“We’re going to be out of pocket very little,” Flint said.

FEMA has paid $76,000 in cleanup costs to Valencia Library and provided more than $10,000 so far for an architectural engineering report, according to FEMA spokesman Russ Edmonston.

Once the report is completed, the agency will determine what additional funds to award the library, Edmonston said.

Most of the library damage was to written materials rather than the 24,000-square-foot building itself. About one-fourth of the library’s 155,000 books, periodicals and other publications were soaked when they toppled into four-foot deep piles and water flooded the building’s east side.

The insurance money and FEMA funds have replaced reference books, government publications, magazines and paperbacks soaked beyond repair and salvaged some 7,500 lesser-damaged materials through vacuum freeze-drying.

They’ve also paid for new ceiling lights and a new paint job, both of which are expected to provide improved illumination for patrons. Some handicapped-accessible fixtures have been installed as well, Flint said.

The renovated Valencia branch will also offer more than double its pre-quake operating hours. The temblor, however, can’t be credited for the additional service hours.

Last month, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors allocated $22.5 million in general funds for libraries. The decision boosts the Valencia facility from 28 operating hours per week to 60, and increases the hours of Santa Clarita’s Newhall and Canyon Country branches from 19 hours per week to 45.

Valencia Library opened in May, 1972. Located in the Los Angeles County Civic Center complex in Santa Clarita, it had the highest circulation figures of the entire county library system.

Up to 250 volunteers have participated in the library’s recovery, MacMorres said. They helped library staffers retrieve, catalogue and box materials in the days after the earthquake and have been re-shelving publications during recent weeks.

“The building is not completely back to us--the bathrooms are not fixed--but we’re working hard,” said MacMorres. “The books are back on the shelves.”

Beginning Thursday, they’ll be back in the hands of patrons.