One year to the day after its original opening, a ribbon-cutting ceremony was held Tuesday morning at the Adair County Library to celebrate the new Genealogy and History Research Center.
The building, which sits directly across from the main library, will serve as a regional facility for genealogy research, according to Library Director Leeann Jessee.
“It takes care of south-central Kentucky, actually a little wider than that,” Jessee explains. “We’ve had travelers from Texas, Indiana, a few different states already—even with Covid. We expect this summer for it to be utilized quite widely by several people from several different states.”
The facility has been in operation for a full year, but Jessee says the ribbon cutting was postponed until people could gather without fear or restrictions due to Covid.
“We decided we’d do it for the first anniversary, so we’ve been open a year now,” Jessee says.
Library staff, community leaders and officials, and Columbia-Adair Chamber of Commerce members were all on hand for the open house and ribbon cutting.
Jessee says the project was more than two decades in the making.
“This project actually had its beginnings about 20 years ago, because that’s when we started discussions with the board and genealogy people here in this county,” Jessee explains. “We were all talking one day about how it would be really cool to have a center someday, and the board started making plans. It took about 20 years to save some money up.”
The cost of the new building was approximately $470,000.
“We didn’t go in debt, there were no bond issues, and the building was completely paid for when it was built, so there’s no debt to the community,” Jessee says. “We used to receive state aid funds which could be used for construction, and each year they would put a little bit of that back into a CD, and they just kind of let that stay there and grow, and we waited until there was enough money to build a building.”
Jessee credits the project’s construction foreman for ordering materials before Covid-related price hikes, and says several members of the community donated their labor for free.
“We were fortunate to have people willing to help us,” Jessee says. “We’re happy that we got this done and can now offer this service to the community.”
