P.O. Box 256
For more than a decade, our community has worked towards building a better library. Our dedication has paid off!
Shutesbury has been awarded the one-and-only Small Library Pilot Program Grant. Voters have approved the Town’s portion of the project. We’ve hired the architects. We’ve begun the design process. We expect to break ground in June 2024. And we are still raising funds to make sure when our library opens, it will be all that Shutesbury needs it to be.
Built in 1902, the M.N. Spear Memorial Library is a single 900 sq ft room with no running water. We love our current library and it has served us well for the past 120+ years, but we have outgrown it.
Our Library is the heart of our community, offering programs for everyone – from story time for our youngest visitors to fitness classes for seniors – and providing opportunities for community connections for all. We need a need a bigger library for all of this and more!
Our new Library, at just under 5,000 square feet, will have space to hold expanded collections to satisfy our community's voracious readers. It will also provide space for a Library of Things – shared resources beyond the library items of yesteryear; cookware, exercise equipment, musical instruments, tools, toys, and more. Most importantly, our new Library will have space for people!
- A community meeting room that seats 50
- A small study room that seats four
- A dedicated teen room
- Cozy reading spaces for adults and children
- Children’s play space
The Friends of the M.N. Spear Memorial Library have anticipated this moment and have worked hard since 2010 to raise funds for our Town’s share of a new library. We have a goal of $550,000 by the time we break ground next spring. We now have $520,000, most raised from within our small community of just under 1,800 residents. For ten years we’ve hosted bake sales and tag sales, collected deposit recyclables and organized Giving Day appeals.
We are in the home stretch of this exciting and important project! All together now!