Chief librarian Alan Wilson is not about to start looking for a new home for the Prince George Public Library's books, magazines and other material following two water leaks at the Bob Harkins branch over the last few weeks.
He labeled the first leak, which occurred in a maintenance room in November, "purely an accidental thing."
"The first one was like, you know, for want of a nail the horse's hoof was lost," Wilson said. "It actually was one of those pieces of strapping on the pipe that came loose and then, of course, because it's behind a conditioning unit, until it comes through the wall, nobody had a reason to go in that closet."
The leak on Wednesday was more serious, Wilson said. It was narrowed down to water backing up when a drain on the coolant tower, which is situated on the building's roof, froze up.
"I've always believed the library's misdesigned," Wilson said. "You never put air conditioning units or water above books."
But Wilson said that's not enough to abandon the building.
Asked if the money spent on the Skylab project, which added nearly 1,000 square feet of new space for public access to computers and the Internet, would have been better spent on maintaining the building's "bones," Wilson said they're separate items.
While Skylab was strictly a Prince George Public Library initiative, the city's responsible for the building's upkeep and the library is merely a rent-paying tenant.
"We wouldn't get into the pipes of the building anymore than a renter would rip out the wall and start dealing with pipes in an apartment building," Wilson said.
He said the city does a good job of maintaining the building, now more than 30 years old, but there are upgrades Wilson would like to see, like fixing the washrooms, resealing the windows and replacing ceiling tiles.
"Some issues have been dealt with," Wilson said. "If you remember we also used to get tremendous flooding in the parking area and that's been made better by sewer repairs."
If the pending construction next door of a $40-million hotel and luxury condominium complex goes ahead, Wilson said it represents an opportunity to provide a better "entrance experience" to the library, "if we can get our ducks aligned with other ducks."
Coun. Dave Wilbur, city council's library liaison, said there are no immediate plans to enhance the library given council's mandate to hold the line on the budget but added the city takes the task of maintaining its buildings "very seriously."
