Maine’s public libraries are caught up in a flurry of expansion and improvement, financed as usual by a combination of taxpayers’ money, foundation grants and private contributions.

The Blue Hill Public Library, for example, is in the midst of an expansion that will double its floor space. It will include a real children’s room in place of the present alcove and a young adults’ area with equipment for video making and editing. An elevator will help make the library accessible to the handicapped and enable the second floor to accommodate part of the book collection. The enlarged library, originally built with a Works Progress Administration grant in 1940, is to reopen in July, says Library Director Marcia Schatz.

In Guilford, a major library expansion more than three years in the planning, is due for ground breaking around June 1. The director, Linda Packard says it will provide space for large-print books, videos and story times – functions that were unheard of in the early 1900s, when Guilford and nearly 3,000 other American communities got their first libraries through grants by Andrew Carnegie, the steel maker and philanthropist.

Another Carnegie library, in Pittsfield, had its nearly 100-year-old storm windows restored last year. The improvement will help children and adults keep warm at Tuesday evening book discussions and will help younger children enjoy their story hour on Tuesday mornings.

The Southwest Harbor Library, originally built for $900 in 1895, completed last year an expansion that doubled its size and has led to a 10 percent increase in circulation. The job cost about $1.2 million, financed by a $50,000 matching grant from the Stephen and Tabitha King Foundation and 700 individual contributions.

At Brooklin, a village with a population of 800 that doubles in the summer, the public library circulates more than 18,000 books, videos and other items a year. Its expansion two years ago was a winner this year of an American Institute of Architects, along with bigger institutions like the Denver Public Library. Director Gretchen Volenik describes a library as “the one thing you can use from the day you’re born until almost the day you die.” The Brooklin library gives a book bag and a book, “Time for Bed” to every newborn child in the community and provides large-print books and arranges free delivery for the elderly.

All this costs money – first the bricks and mortar and then the additional equipment and staffing to enable the expanded libraries to keep up with expanded use. The King Foundation grants, like those of Andrew Carnegie, have helped finance many Maine libraries, including, of course, the handsome expanded Bangor library.

Recent public funding has come from the New Century Community Program, in which the Maine Legislature included $500,000 for library construction in the last session. Librarians throughout the state are urging their patrons to lobby their legislators to approve LD 1433, which has cleared the Joint Appropriations Committee and would include additional construction and project funds for libraries.

The written word (as well as the recorded and filmed and digital word) is more important than ever. Libraries deserve continued public and private support.