Come January, finding a good book to settle down with on a cold winter’s night will be a lot easier in the Perry and Lecompton area.

That’s when the new Perry Lecompton Public Library will open in a room at the Thriftway grocery store in Perry.

“We will be just like any other library. We’re going to serve people from birth through 105,” said Karla Meyer, who has been working on getting a library started since spring.

This library will be operated by volunteers. The shelves will be filled with donated books. Operating costs will be paid for with monetary donations and grants, Meyer said.

Meyer, of Lecompton, is optimistic about the library’s chances for success for several reasons, including the demographics of the area it will serve.

“There are a lot of people in our community who, because of age or income, don’t have the ability to get to Lawrence or Topeka,” she said. “I didn’t realize how large that community was until I started talking to several community leaders.”

There also is another reason: the success of a similar library three years ago housed in a small, 8-by-8-foot room in the management office of the Lakewood Hills district near Ozawkie. Beverly Warren started that library with 100 books of her own and saw the shelves fill to 1,000 donated volumes. That library’s popularity grew so much and so fast in a year that Lakewood management asked for it to be closed.

“It grew much bigger than they expected,” Warren said.

Warren later approached the city of Perry about starting a library there. She was given permission to look for a site but was offered no special help, Warren said. While seeking a nonprofit status and federal identification number for the library, Warren kept looking for a good building. None was found.

“At times it was very discouraging,” she said.

Nine months ago, Warren teamed up with Meyer to work on the library project. Others also joined the effort. A library board was formed, and an agreement with Perry Thriftway was worked out. The store’s owners agreed to let the library locate in a room that once housed video rentals. The board hopes that once it gets a funding stream, it will be able to reimburse the store for the space.

Meyer called it a win-win situation for the store and library.

“People come by and pick up their milk and cookies, and they stop and grab a book while they are there,” she said.

John Byers, one of the store’s co-owners, said they were trying to give back to the community.

“They don’t have a library, and this is a big thing for us to be a part of the community and the school system,” Byers said.

The library board is seeking volunteers to help set up the library, catalog books and run it when it opens. Plans call for it to be open the first week of January, Monday through Friday, including some evening hours as well as during the day on Saturday. The library already has 10,000 books and space for as many as 30,000 books.