Chittenden Public Library: Where cozy meets community

Written by Joanna Tebbs Young

I just love our library! It’s a warm, welcoming and cozy place to visit and we all know each other there. It really is the heart of our little town and the fact that it is part of the school is a wonderful bonus. I feel grateful to be part of the library community. — Sarah Quint, President of the Chittenden Public Library Board

On a recent Saturday, 185 years, almost to the day, after library trustees first made 188 books housed at the home of their inaugural librarian, E.J. Perry, available to the public, snow quietly falls outside the library at Chittenden’s Barstow Memorial School. Inside it is equally quiet. With its six tall windows looking out on fields and trails at the edge of the Green Mountain National Forest, decorative lamps hanging from a barrelled ceiling, and cozy chairs nestled between wooden bookshelves, the atmosphere of the small library is serene.

But the lull is temporary.