Clean up is underway following a small fire Monday at the Oxford Lane Library. The library was closed Tuesday and all programming canceled.
"We don't have a full understanding of what happened yet, and we're still investigating and waiting to hear about that, but to the best of our knowledge, we had a small electrical fire in an overhead light fixture," says Carrie Mancuso, public relations manager for the Lane Libraries, tells WVXU.
"We're hopeful that we're going to be open on Wednesday. We are waiting to make that call as late as possible," she adds.
Mancuso says the fire was contained to a small area in the children's department, only affecting the area immediately around and under the light fixture.
A restoration crew was on site Tuesday doing clean up and assessing the damage. Mancuso says it's too soon to estimate the cost of the damage.
Mancuso says while the library may reopen as early as Wednesday, it could be a while before the Children's Department on the lower level reopens.
"We are mostly dealing with furniture and some water clean up from the fire department putting out the fire. Luckily, we don't have a lot of materials that were damaged. We do have a small amount of furniture that was affected, and some computer stations," she says. "Despite the fact that we don't have large scale damage of any kind to our collection, we will have to have all of the books in that area professionally cleaned. That will take some time to clean those, but we're very relieved to know that they're not a loss."
The Oxford branch moved into its current space on Locust Street 10 years ago and had planned to celebrate its anniversary on Friday. Mancuso says that was planned to take place in the lower level which was affected by the fire.
As of this publication, a decision about whether to move forward with the party or postpone it had not yet been made.
Updates about the party and the branch's operating hours will be updated on the Lane website.
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