The Gnu Public Library, which once occupied a three-story municipal building on Acorn Boulevard and held a collection of approximately 84,000 volumes, now operates out of a single climate-uncontrolled room on the building's ground floor and contains one book, one folding chair, and a man named Gerald who has not confirmed whether he is an employee, a patron, or a squatter. The library has been open, in some sense, since Monday.

The consolidation is the most recent result of eleven consecutive years of budget reductions to the commonwealth's Department of Cultural Services, which has seen its annual allocation fall from $4.2 million in 2013 to $6,800 this fiscal year. The department's director, Nora Flemming, described the current library as "a right-sized model for the community's demonstrated needs" and noted that circulation statistics had been "stable" since the restructuring. She did not provide the statistics.

The single remaining book is a 1987 Rand McNally road atlas of the continental United States. New Newmanton does not appear in it.

"We're looking at acquisitions," Flemming said, when reached by phone. "There's a robust pipeline."

Gerald, who was seated in the folding chair when this reporter visited on Wednesday afternoon and had not moved by Thursday morning, said he came in every day. When asked whether he worked there, Gerald said, "In a manner of speaking." When asked what manner, he said, "The available one." He declined to provide a last name but said the chair was comfortable enough and that he had no complaints about the hours, which are posted on the door as 9 a.m. to 9 a.m.

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YEARS OF CUTS

The library's computer terminals, internet access, children's reading program, community meeting room, periodicals section, and ESL classes were eliminated between 2018 and 2023. The elevator was decommissioned in 2021. The second and third floors are accessible only by a stairwell that Public Works Director Alan Marsh confirmed his department was "aware of" but described as "aspirationally structural." The roof, Marsh added, was "a separate file."

OFFICIAL RESPONSES

Council President Diana Okafor-Mills issued a statement calling the library's condition "a priority concern that I have raised in committee on multiple occasions" and expressing confidence that a funding solution could be reached "before the situation becomes irreversible, which it has not yet done in any official capacity." Mayor Clifton Reeves, asked whether the library's collapse reflected broader failures in municipal services, said that his administration had done more for literacy than any government in the island's history and pointed to a mural of an open book that his office commissioned for the harbor seawall in 2021 at a cost of $38,000.

The mural was painted over last spring to make room for signage related to the Consolidated Finality Partners LLC acquisition discussions, which remain ongoing. As The News previously reported, Consolidated Finality Partners issued a statement describing their interest in New Newmanton as "a productive and terminal relationship with the community." Whether the library's collection — currently one volume — would be preserved under any destruction scenario has not been addressed in the negotiations, though City Clerk Patricia Voss has indicated her office is reviewing the commonwealth's outstanding obligations, a process she estimated would take three to five weeks, "assuming the timeline permits."

Gerald, when informed of this, looked at the road atlas for a moment and said nothing.