When a small village in northeast Ohio opens the first library for its residents, a piece of Marietta College history will be part of the facility.

One hundred units of shelving from the former Dawes Memorial Library on the college campus will next be used in the still-to-be-constructed Midvale Public Library in Tuscarawas County, giving a big boost to a long hoped-for project.

"This is huge for us," said Jim Ford, founder/director of the Midvale Public Library. "This is something we're doing through grants and donations, and now we don't have to pay for shelving. Everything we needed, they had here."

The shelving was part of 1,200 units used in Marietta College's old library, demolished in preparation of the new $17.5 million Legacy Library, opening Monday. During the Legacy Library construction, the shelves still held most of the college's books, stored at the Tractor Supply Company building.

Now the books are back on campus at the new library and the old shelves are going to new nonprofit homes, free of cost, said Tom Perry, director of college relations.

"Any nonprofit can call our physical plant and ask for shelves," he said. "They just have to be able to load them and take them."

Already, shelves and filing cabinets have been taken for use at Marietta High School, the Dally Memorial Library in Sardis, the Ritchie County Library in West Virginia, Parkersburg's Habitat for Humanity and the city of Marietta's engineering, police and facilities departments.

About 400 units are still available.

It was the next step for the Midvale Memorial Library, a 2,500-square-foot library planned in the village of Midvale, home to 800 people.

"Everyone there is very excited about this," said Ford, as he loaded shelves from the Marietta storage facility Wednesday. "Where we live there is a lot of poverty and people just don't have the resources to get the kids together and go to the nearest library."

Since it's surrounded by other small villages, the Midvale library will provide services to those areas as well, Ford said.

A yearlong book drive has gathered more than 35,000 books for the site and ground is expected to be broken on the building late this year on land already obtained. A $200,000 fundraising drive is under way to fund the construction.

"Now, with the shelves, we've got everything we need for inside the library," Ford said. "It's all falling into place."