HANOVER – With the flip of a switch, electricity will finally come to the 124-year-old Gardner Roberts Memorial Library at 6 p.m. Oct. 10.

Years of planning and fundraising, donations of labor and time, and a community that has worked together has brought power to the library.

To mark the occasion, a Celebration of Light has been set for 6 to 7 p.m. that evening. Newly installed lights will be activated, cider and doughnuts will be served, and people will have a chance to win one of six holiday or theme baskets.

“I’m so excited I can’t believe it,” said Peggy Susbury, a retired SAD 43 elementary teacher and Hanover’s librarian.

Three of the lights that will illuminate the book stacks room aren’t really new, but were once lighting Parent’s Clothing Store, which operated until the 1950s on Congress Street in Rumford.

Gail Parent, one of the members of the Library Bee, donated them.

“At one of our Bee meetings, Gail said her son had found them in their barn,” Susbury said.

Susbury said lighting the library must be a little bit like when the town got electricity in 1924. She said one of her early co-workers, Florence Fifield, who was also a teacher, told her how people stood outside their homes and waited as someone switched on the electricity 84 years ago.

Susbury and the Bee ladies gather weekly in the maple and birch interior of the library to label and sort books, and do whatever else needs doing.

For the past few years, fundraisers were held to finance moving the library from Howard Pond Road to its home next to the town office on Ferry Road. The interior and exterior of the building have been polished and spiffed up.

It was built by local businessman Gardner Roberts in 1884 as a post office. A few years later, it became the library, said Clem Worcester, a library trustee and town clerk. The mail slot is now the book return slot.

Many older books have been sold, and with the money, newer books were purchased. However, the library still has dozens of older books, along with book sections for children, novels, Maine and New England, and research-related sections. Magazines are also available.

With electricity will come an Internet connection. Susbury said the library with its more than 5,000 volumes will become a satellite of the Rumford Public Library. If Rumford has a book wanted by someone in Hanover, it can be brought to Hanover.

Susbury said Karl Aromaa, director of Rumford’s library, has donated books and helped with professional expertise to get the Hanover library going.

Many others have also donated books.

The library is not supported by the town, so book sales, bake sales and other fundraising pays the bills. Susbury, who volunteers her time, has been offering baked good each Wednesday when the library is open. Money raised from the sale of her baked goods goes toward operating the library.

Besides the Oct. 10 Celebration of Light, the library will be open all day starting at 10 a.m. to sell books and baked goods, and to provide a chance for people to just sit around the table and chat.

The library will remain open Wednesdays, plus Thursday mornings when the Library Bee meets, until the end of October, or “for as long as we can stand the cold,” Susbury said.

The library will have light by the 10th, but there’s still no heat.

It will reopen in the spring.