Here is a look at our year in review for 2025.
This year was a very stable year for staff. Liz Schiavoni joined our staff in November. They will be learning our financials and providing backup bookkeeping.
If you’ve been by the library in the last couple of weeks you may have noticed that our Story Garden got a much needed face lift. Thanks to the Friends of the Library we have a beautiful new fence with gates that work!
UPDATE - We are in the middle of a restoration, renovation, and update to our Carl Heidenblad History room. This multi-year project will be funded with grant money with the first of those grants awarded this year by the State of New Hampshire’s Moose Plate program. We were awarded a second round from the Moose Plate program for 2026. We also received small grants and donations from Windham Endowment’s Underhill/Levin/Gross Library fund and the Derry Medical Charitable fund. With these grants and donations we were able to replace some of the shelving in the room and now have funds to hopefully complete the majority of the preservation work, which includes restoring the portrait of Colonel Thomas Nesmith and preserving several library catalogues and registers from the first decade of the library’s history.
To welcome our newest GMILCS library, Leach Library in Londonderry, to the community, the consortium held our second library hop over the summer. This provided a fun summer project for families and friends to enjoy.
Lastly, we added a new collection to our library: Playaways. They provide a fun, creative, and interactive way for kids to discover more about their favorite characters or topics and an alternative audio format for adults.
It has been a very busy year at the library. Ebook and audiobook circulation is up 16% from this same time last year. Our circulation numbers remain steady, but traffic to the building and program attendance are on track to be up by more than 10%. The use of our meeting and study spaces has gone up a whopping 25% this past year. This is an indication of how central to our community the library is. As my seventh year as Library Director draws to a close, I continue to be so grateful for the support that this community shows our library.
It is a pleasure working with this great staff, Board of Trustees, Friends of the Library volunteers, and the countless other volunteers that give of their time to make the library a wonderful community asset.
We all look forward to serving our entire community in 2026 when we will be joining many of our town partners to celebrate the 250th birthday of our nation!
Sylvie Brikiatis,
Library Director
