A year ago, when June's floods destroyed the Crossings Mall bridge, staff at the Kanawha County Public Library's Elk Valley branch were unsure how long they'd be out of commission, and what they would do in the meantime.
"We didn't know - we had no idea how long things would take or what it meant for us," said Terry Wooten, marketing and development manager for the Kanawha County Public Library.
After a year of operating out of a temporary location in Big Chimney, though, this week Elk Valley Library staff will begin moving back to the Crossings Mall location, as soon as the bridge has reopened.
"I've been waiting for this day since June 23 last year," said Ellie Teaford, supervisor for the Elk Valley Library. "There's so much more we can do there. I'm just so happy to be getting back."
The Elk Valley Express - the name of the temporary location in Big Chimney, where the Elk Vally Library originally was located until it moved to Crossings Mall in 2011 - officially closed its doors at 5 p.m. Saturday. The staff hopes to have the Crossings Mall location back up and running by the morning of Aug. 1.
Following the floods last summer, Elk Valley Library was shut down for a month before personnel looked into renting a temporary space, and found that its old Big Chimney location was available for rent.
"It was nice because we knew this was here, and we were able to set it up just about the same as we had it before," Teaford said.
In just a week, a lease was signed with the property's owners, and Elk Valley employees worked on restocking collections of books, movies, CDs and other resources by collecting returns and borrowing supplies from other libraries in the Kanawha County Public Library system, Teaford said.
Today, the temporary location's collection consists completely of its own materials collected in the last year, with all things from neighboring libraries returned.
There was no interior damage to the Crossings Mall location, Teaford said. The only thing stopping them from operating was the bridge being inaccessible, a stark difference from the Clendenin Library, which also closed after the floods, the fate of which Teaford said she's still unsure about.
For the last year, the Elk Valley Express has served library patrons from both of those locations.
When the Elk Valley Library originally relocated to the Crossings Mall location, Wooten said they saw the number of patrons double compared to that of the Big Chimney locations. Similarly, in the last year as the temporary location operated out of Big Chimney, Wooten said the number of patrons split in half.
"We've done as much as we could," Teaford said. "It's been an interesting year. It was really great that we could provide a temporary location, but we're ready to get back."
Even without the temporary move, Teaford believes the past year would have seen less library patrons than usual as citizens coped and adapted to life after the floods, which meant less leisure time. In their first few weeks open last summer, Teaford saw a lot of people coming in to make copies of paperwork necessary to apply for aid, and connect to the internet since they didn't have it at home.
Crossings Mall, Teaford said, has more resources at its disposal that help the library with its day-to-day services, as well as special events like reading programs and the like. With several private reading rooms, Teaford hopes community organizations that previously utilized the library as a meeting place will return. Really, she said, she's looking forward to getting back into the groove of reading programs and daily operations.
"It just makes me so happy that we're finally able to do this. I think it's going to give people a sense that Elkview is back," Teaford said. "It gives people the feeling that their community is back ... that's what libraries are - your library is your community center."
Because of the move, the Elk Valley summer reading program deadline has been pushed back to Aug. 7. Anyone with any questions about where to return books or turn in papers can visit the Kanawha County Public Library's website for answers to frequently asked questions.