Today marks yet another proud chapter in the 115-year history of the Bangor Public Library. Staff members will open their doors for a three-day celebration of the newly renovated landmark, beginning with a Friday open house, highlighted by guided tours and a talk for young arists, to be followed by a day of discussions, art and music on Saturday, and rededication ceremonies on Sunday.

Eager library patrons actually returned to their reopened second home on Jan. 26, when they marveled for the first time at favorite rooms and hallways well restored, with the addition of a light, comfortable 26,000-square-foot wing added seemlessly to the side and rear.

The grass is green now and the tulips are in bloom, a far more appropriate time for an official grand reopening than in the January doldrums. The library’s “1-2-3-Go!” festivities will celebrate not only spring’s return, but the renewal of a downtown treasure that had seen few improvements since original dedication ceremonies on Dec. 20, 1913.

The renovation project proves what organization, a sense of historical perspective, and the generosity of local citizens like Stephen and Tabitha King, who started the $8.5 million capital campaign with a $2.5 million gift, can accomplish in a relatively brief period. Projects in other cities have failed, not for a lack of good intentions, but because organizers forgot their community and its history.

Not Bangor. Committee planners, inspired by Library Director Barbara McDade, long-time library friend Constance Carlson and so many others, had the good sense to hire architect Robert A.M. Stern, who deftly blended the old and new without disrupting the lines of the lovely riverdrivers sculpture nearby and the Peirce Memorial Park it occupies. Just as Boston architects Peabody and Stearns crafted the original building with distinction, so did Stern, who will lecture at the library from 3 p.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday, rise to the occasion.

As the city — and the world — look toward a new millennium for enlightenment, may the new, improved Bangor Public Library thrive for generations to come, a storehouse of knowledge in a carefully restored home.

In the words of Barbara McDade, writing in the fine new book, “Seven Books in a Footlocker: A Commemorative History of the Bangor Public Library,” “Although the tools have changed, the mission of the library hasn’t. I think it’s fair to say that in the future the hows will continue to change, but the whys will remain the same.”