West Shore Library has new digs in Lakeside

The West Shore Library in Lakeside has been serving the communities on the west side of Flathead Lake for 25 years, but it is now doing so from a new location at Volunteer Park.

The all-volunteer organization began as the Lakeside Library in the garage of Bill Brass Sr. in 1995 and moved into the Lakeside Business Center on Bierney Creek Road less than a year later. Renamed the West Shore Library in 2002 as the organization serves Lakeside, Somers, Rollins, Dayton, Elmo, Proctor and Big Arm, the library spent more than two decades on Bierney Creek Road before the donation of the former real estate office at the edge of the park. After months of renovation, the library opened at the new location Oct. 5.

“We are still moving in. We are not quite done with the move yet, but we are already loving the new building,” Library Vice President and Secretary Debbie Meiers said. “The reopening has been amazing. I think people realized how much they missed us when we were closed and couldn’t wait to come back. The response since we got into the building has been great.”

According to Meiers, the new location at Volunteer Park is a perfect fit for an organization that is built on the backs of its more than 30 volunteers and the numerous donations of money, time, books and more that have kept the library running and expanding over the years.

“We don’t recognize our volunteers as much as we probably should. We thank our donors and our patrons, but the volunteers have been the lifeblood of what keeps this place going,” Meiers said.

WHILE THERE are several volunteers who have been with the library from the beginning, Meiers exemplifies the group’s volunteer spirit as much as anyone.

Her library journey began on a cold, snowy night 20 years ago when, as a new transplant from Los Angeles to Lakeside, Meiers pulled into the library parking lot to escape a raging snowstorm. At the time, she didn’t even know Lakeside had a library.

Seeing a light on inside, Meiers decided to take a look inside. When she explained to the person behind the front desk that she was new to town and was just looking around, she was handed a folder and told “Congratulations, you’re the library’s new Volunteer Coordinator.” Meiers has been volunteering with the library ever since.

“It did not take long for me to get to know the community really well,” she said. “It’s just been wonderful. This library is how I made all the friends I have here, it’s how I joined a book club and it has been my life for the past 20 years.”

After spending 30 years in the music business in California, she decided to get away from it all and join her brother, who was already living in the Flathead Valley. Finding the library was just meant to be, she said.

“It’s funny, since I am such a big reader. I went another direction with my career before, but if I could have had my wish, I would have been a librarian from the age of 8,” she said “To be able to retire, come to Lakeside and find this library has been amazing.”

WHILE THE library is elated to have a new home, the renovations were costly and ate up much of the organization’s funding reserves in a year that has been very tough for fundraising due to COVID-19. The nonprofit library receives no state funding and is glad to not have to pay the $40,000 annual rent of their previous location, but Meiers says there are new costs to having a building of their own. Despite that, she and the rest of the volunteers are excited to have the chance to finally expand the library’s inventory with new books.

“We have a wonderful community that buys books, reads them and brings them to us in pristine condition. We really have lucked out with that,” she said. “It hasn’t been until the past two or three years that we have been able to actually budget for new inventory and we are looking forward to being able to do more of that.”

The 1,800 square feet at the new location is actually slightly smaller than what the library had at Bierney Creek Road, but the building has more of an open floor plan for the library’s 15,000 items, including an extensive Montana book collection, popular children’s section and other collections, such as audio books and DVDs.

As always, the organization is looking for more volunteers to help out with everything from manning the front desk to shoveling snow from the sidewalks around the building, but the future looks bright for the unique, small-town library.

“There have been a couple of years when we thought we would have to close down, but we persevered and kept that from happening,” Meiers said. “We have been very lucky and we are happy to be able to continue serving the west shore communities.”

The West Shore Library is open from 10 a.m. until 4 p.m. Monday through Saturday. For more information, visit their website at www.wsclibrary.org.

Reporter Jeremy Weber may be reached at 758-4446 or jweber@dailyinterlake.com