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Hopkinsville library receives $754,200 state grant for renovations, upgrades

The Hopkinsville-Christian County Public Library logo.
Hopkinsville-Christian County Public Library
The Hopkinsville-Christian County Public Library logo.

A substantial grant is set to fund a series of renovations and upgrades for the Hopkinsville-Christian County Public Library (HCCPL).

HCCPL recently received a $754,200 grant from the Kentucky Department for Libraries and Archives (KDLA) designated for that purpose, in addition to debt retirement.

Starting this year, the KDLA’s Public Library Facilities Construction Fund grant will provide HCCPL with $37,710 annually for the next two decades — which HCCPL Executive Director DeeAnna Sova said is a “big deal” because her library is one of seven in the state not funded by a local library tax.

“Not having a tax is like not being able to go to the bank and having a for sure income. You can’t borrow to build a house or buy a house if you don’t have a job,” Sova said. “We only get what the city and county can provide for us every year. It’s not guaranteed that we’ll get the sum amount that we asked for the previous year.”

Sova said there are several renovations and upgrades planned for HCCPL, including those intended to make the building more structurally sound, and to make some areas compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Beyond that, she plans to increase the size of the community room and add a makerspace stocked with a 3D printer, sewing machines, button makers, cricket cutters and more. HCCPL currently allows community members to access such resources upon request but does not have a room dedicated to them.

“Being able to have one large space where it’s accessible to anyone that wants to come in for the day, try out a new recipe, hem a pair of pants, work on some kind of sewing project — that makerspace makes it available to multiple people,” she said. “And of course, there will be technology that we hope to put in there, too.”

With this grant, Sova hopes HCCPL will be able to adapt its offerings to meet the needs of the surrounding community — whether that’s for the books, computers, programs or something else entirely — as times and technologies evolve.

“I think the pandemic in 2020 really showed us a lot of the ways that people are going to need to get resources,” she said. “We’re really trying to think way outside the box and not just build the library for what the patrons need today, this year, but what can we even envision and imagine they’re going to need in 10 years.”

HCCPL has been operating at its Bethel Street facility since January 1977.

Dustin Wilcox is a television production student at Murray State University. He graduated from Hopkinsville High School in 2019.
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