Patrons of the Jake Epp Library in Steinbach were welcomed back to the building Monday after a five month hiatus for construction. The doors opened at 10:00 a.m.

Head Librarian Loraine Trudeau is excited to see the reactions to the new space. "I am very excited to open the doors and I'm anxious to see who will be the first ones through the door. There are a lot of surprises to be seen in the library. It is a much larger space and we definitely have more shelf space to add to our collection and we're going to be able to do more programming for the children and the youth."

Meanwhile Trudeau notes many of the books that were checked out prior to the closure are coming back. "We've actually had our book drop open for the last week-and-a-half. We had over 30,000 books that were out, floating around, while we were closed. To date, we've had 17,000 of those books returned. That means that we still have over 12,000 still floating out there ready to come back." She expects many of them to be returned in the coming weeks.

The grand opening of the library is set for Wednesday afternoon at 2:00.