JIM KEIGHTON helps move shelves as part of the Books 'N Friends Bookstore expansion on Main Street in Sparta.

Bookstore heralds second expansion; to celebrate its first-year anniversary

Since its March 2003 opening, the Friends of the Library bookstore — Books 'N Friends on Main Street in Sparta — has doubled in size once, and has recently more than doubled again.

The nonprofit bookstore's manager, Alice Keighton, and her husband Jim, both Sparta residents, were on hand at the store on Feb. 19 to provide information about the expansion to the bookstore.

"We've had so many books donated in the year that we've been open that we had to expand," Alice Keighton explained as the reason behind the soon-to-open expansion to the bookstore, for which a grand opening celebration will be combined with a one-year birthday celebration for the entire bookstore during its business hours, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., on March 3.

Refreshments will be served to the public at the event, for which she said at the Feb. 19 interview that a sign would be posted in the window of the bookstore this week.

Specific improvements resulting from the expansion are to include the children's corner being moved and "opened up" into a larger space, with comfortable beanbags and pillows for the children as they peruse the books in that section of the bookstore. There will also be what Alice Keighton described as a "comfortable reading corner" in the space by the windows in the back of the bookstore.

She cited volunteer and community support as the reason behind why the bookstore has more than quadrupled its size in the year that it has been in existence, noting, "We are now five times bigger than we were one year ago."

The building housing the bookstore used to be Russo's Clothing Store, which was owned by the wife of the owner of Gil's Jeans & Things, which is located across Main Street from the clothing store. Jim Keighton noted that concern about other people wanting to get their hands on that portion of the building that is now being used in the expansion of the bookstore was one reason for pursuing the expansion of the bookstore.

He estimated that before the current expansion, the bookstore had a size of 8,000 square feet, whereas as a result of the expansion, that size was increased to 18,000 square feet.

He also estimated that the bookstore currently contains 13,000 books on many different topics.

Get the rest of this article in this week's issue of the Alleghany News! Back