Pictured above is one of the study rooms in the basement and the floors saturated with water.
The white tape sectioning off the stairs and the hum of fans blowing will soon disappear for good. On September 23, for the first time in the 2023-2024 school year, The Nest and the basement of the Oliver Wendell Holmes Library (OWHL) will be open to student use. The basement has remained closed since August 18 due to extensive repairs preventing mold, replacing and fixing broken equipment, and drying out areas that were waterlogged by a series of floods over the summer.
The basement suffered two floods; the first on August 8, which damaged walls and carpeting, according to Camille Torres-Hoven, Director of the OWHL. The second flood, which struck on August 18, exacerbated the damage caused by the first flood, leading to more significant damage to The Nest and library collections located in the basement.
“The first flood was just a flash flood — the water was in the floors, and it was saturated into the rugs, but wasn’t building up. OPP was dealing with other floods and wasn’t available right away, but they did come over when they could and started working on it, and we were fine to open after that. However, seven or eight days later, there was a second flash flood and, because everything was wet, when the water came down, there was nothing to absorb it. And the water got really high, it almost reached the outlets, so that second flood is what caused the closing of the basement,” said Torres-Hoven.
Laura Blake, a Research Librarian at the OWHL, spoke on the disruption caused by the closing of the library. Blake explained how the damage has negatively impacted students’ research experiences in the library.
“Anything that gets between the students and the collections is a bad thing. And so having the lower level closed means that you all don’t have the opportunity to locate your own material and browse and discover things by serendipity, and do all those things that we want you all to be able to do as part of using the library. We can recover that service a little bit by helping you locate things in the catalog and then go to the basement to get them but it’s not the same… Going forward, I think it will be very much like it has been before,” said Blake.
Alongside affecting regular library operations, the temporary closure of The Nest and study rooms has left many clubs without a meeting space and unable to conduct club meetings. Ishaan Padmawar ’26, a member of the Andover Robotics Club, expressed his frustration about the closure of the Makerspace and showed excitement for the reopening of The Nest.
“It’s really frustrating because all of our materials, supplies, all of our stuff is in there and we can’t get access to it, which means we can [only] do stuff like brainstorm ideas for the robot. [Now,] we can actually get our hands on the materials and start building prototypes and stuff. I feel pretty hopeful about [The Nest] opening soon because everybody gets to finally get their hands on materials and we get to start building,” said Padmawar.
Elizabeth “Liz” Chavarria, The Nest Coordinator for the OWHL, described that, while The Nest would reopen Saturday, some services and equipment would not be available until later in the week. Chavarria went on to explain how she was excited by the potential reorganization and addition of new technology that could be done in light of the changes to The Nest.
“We’re still on target. [The Nest] was going to be open so people could be in the space and still use some of the tables and stuff. I’m working really hard to get the 3D printers and maybe the laser cutters back up and running soon. One of the things that I’m really excited about is that I would like to have more [computer numerical control] routing…and so we’re taking advantage of the situation because we have availability of the movers and we can think, ‘What can we do to try to enhance the space…’ We’re trying to find the silver lining in the flood situation,” said Chavarria.
