It was discovered Sunday evening, February 25, 2007, that a water pipe had burst and dumped close to 500 gallons of water onto ceilings, floors, books and public computers in part of the Milford-Miami Township Branch at 1099 State Route 131, Milford, OH. Clean up began Sunday night and continued through the night by Clermont County Public Library (CCPL) staff.

The branch is open for business this week, but services will be limited as CCPL waits for the carpet to dry completely and estimate the total damage. An extensive part of the most popular adult and children’s nonfiction sections were destroyed. It will take one to two weeks to completely evaluate the total damage and start replacing destroyed items.

Many of the nonfiction books are available from the other nine branches of CCPL. Customers can place a hold on items available at other branches and those items will be shuttled to the Milford-Miami Township branch for pickup. If a customers needs help placing a hold on an item, they should ask a staff member for help or call any of the CCPL branch locations for assistance if they are placing a hold through the Library’s web catalog at www.clermontlibrary.org.

The Library expects to recover most of the damage costs through insurance. We ask customers to be patient with the services and staff at the Milford-Miami Township branch at this time. There is a lot of clean up work to be done and it could take at least 3 months to replace the items that were destroyed.

Discover Your Inner Author on February 24, 2007 at the Union Township Civic Center at 2 p.m. Six local southern Ohio published writers:(top left) Teresa Slack, Shelley Galloway, Heather Webber, Diane Craver, Cathy Liggett and Pamela Lewis (not pictured) share their secrets in "The Romance of Writing: Discover Your Inner Author."

Additional information can be found on the Romance webpage.

This program is presented by the Clermont County Public Library with support from Starbuck and Biggs.

Easy Tomato and Basil Bruschetta is on the menu this month, as the Gourmet Librarian tells about her holidays and how to make this delicious and easy recipe.