Antigua Public Library

Antigua Public Library
Country Antigua and Barbuda
Established 1854
Location St. John's
Coordinates 17°07′14″N 61°50′19″W / 17.120508°N 61.838485°W / 17.120508; -61.838485Coordinates: 17°07′14″N 61°50′19″W / 17.120508°N 61.838485°W / 17.120508; -61.838485

The Antigua Public Library is the national library of Antigua and Barbuda, located in St. John's, Antigua and Barbuda.

History

One of the earliest sources of books on the island was through the work of the Reverend Thomas Bray in the late 17th Century.[1] Various library societies grew to prominence in the mid-19th Century, including the Antigua Library Society and the Presbyterian Church Library. The colonial government transformed the Antigua Library Society into the Antigua Public Library in 1854.

Old building

On 8 October 1974, a destructive earthquake hit the island, causing the old wooden building to be damaged and closed. A sign was affixed to the building noting "This building was damaged in the earthquake of 1974. Repairs are pending", and the library was relocated to a small area upstairs above a dry good store on Market Street, St Johns. That the sign was still in place a decade and more after the earthquake was a major theme of A Small Place, a 1988 book by Jamaica Kincaid, which suggested that the continued use of the inadequate building, too small to house all the books from the old library, demonstrated the indifference of the post-colonial government to matters of culture and learning.

New building

The Antigua and Barbuda High Commission noted in 2002[2] that construction of a new modern 25,000-square-foot (2,300 m2) library was "progressing well". An EC$1 million donation from Allen Stanford was received in December 2004, in order to reduce the time for completion of the library from the 'too long' one year to six months, with a promise from him to match further donations received. The High Commission noted in 2006 that the library would be ready by quarter 1 2007,[3] and in late 2007 that the library 'must be delivered' in the first half of 2008.[4] A $6.45 million contract was signed to complete the library in 2008 by March 2009.[5] The construction was handed over by the Antigua Public Works Department, which had built the incomplete library structure to Gilcon Enterprises,[6] a local firm, which then had its contract withdrawn due to delays in pricing the job, and then passed onto Antigua & Barbuda Contractors Enterprises Limited, a local construction consortium. The new consortium examined the site in September 2008, noting that it had numerous structural defects, delaying scheduled completion from mid-2009 to the end of 2009.[7] Work on the library was again suspended in 2011, but resumed late in January 2013.[8] The building itself was competed and dedicated in September 2014, but it is unclear whether or not the library as such is currently serving the public.[9]

See also

References

  1. ↑ ""Before the Public": Some Early Libraries of Antigua". 38: 1–23. JSTOR 25549065. Retrieved 7 June 2013.
  2. ↑ Archived May 9, 2008, at the Wayback Machine.
  3. ↑ Archived July 26, 2011, at the Wayback Machine.
  4. ↑ Archived July 26, 2011, at the Wayback Machine.
  5. ↑ "Library Focus" (PDF). Foapl.org. 2008. Retrieved 2015-12-21.
  6. ↑ "Gilcon Enterprises Ltd". Gilcononline.net. Retrieved 2015-12-22.
  7. ↑ "Library Focus" (PDF). Foapl.org. 2009. Retrieved 2015-12-21.
  8. ↑ "Work on Public Library to resume next week | Antigua Observer Newspaper". Antiguaobserver.com. Retrieved 2015-12-22.
  9. ↑ https://web.archive.org/web/20140415175347/http://www.ab.gov.ag/article_details.php?id=4758&category=38. Archived from the original on April 15, 2014. Retrieved September 5, 2014. Missing or empty |title= (help)

External links

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