Millbrook Library reopens with a room for listening

By the Courier staff · November 8, 2026

After eighteen months behind scaffolding, the Millbrook Public Library opened its doors again on Saturday morning, and the line of residents waiting outside stretched past the bakery on Elm Street by nine o'clock.

The renovation, which cost the town just under four million dollars, replaced the leaking roof, rebuilt the children's wing, and turned the old periodicals room into what the library calls a listening room: a quiet space with armchairs, headphones and a collection of more than two thousand audiobooks.

Head librarian Dana Okafor said the listening room was the part she was proudest of. Half the people who come in here are reading with their ears now, she said. Commuters, people with low vision, parents who only get to finish a book while they fold laundry. We wanted a room that took that seriously.

The children's wing doubled in size. It now has a reading loft built into the old bell tower, a craft table that seats twenty, and a corner of picture books in eleven languages, chosen with families from the town's newer neighborhoods.

Not everything is finished. The elevator to the second floor will not be inspected until December, so the local history collection is being brought downstairs on request. The café that was promised in the original plans was cut when costs rose, and the space is a seating area for now.

The library also changed its hours. It now opens at eight on weekdays, an hour earlier than before, and stays open until nine on Thursdays. Late fees on children's books have been dropped for good, a change the town council approved in the spring.

Residents seemed pleased. Retired teacher Walter Brandt, who said he had visited the library every week for forty years, called the new reading room the best thing the town had built since the bridge. A nine-year-old named Priya said the loft was the best part, because you can see the whole street from up there.

The library will hold an open house next Saturday with tours every hour, and the listening room will run a free workshop on borrowing audiobooks through the library's app.