The Oxford Lane Library is closed following a fire Tuesday. A light fixture in the Children's Department caught fire a little after noon. The cause is under investigation.
In a statement, the library says the branch will remain closed until further notice.
"Our team is working to complete safety checks and preparations to reopen as soon as possible for our patrons," the statement reads.
This is the second fire within five months in the children's area of the Oxford branch.
"We had a similar incident as we had last year with a small fire in the Oxford Lane Library Children's Department," Public Information Officer Carrie Mancuso tells WVXU. "It was, once again, an electrical related issue. I can't speak to the specifics since it just occurred, and we have not yet begun the investigation, so we're working to find out what happened, but it was a small fire in the Children's Department, in the ceiling lighting units."
The library says damage from the second fire was minimal and all staff and patrons got out safely. The branch manager put out the fire quickly with an extinguisher. Mancuso says most of the damage from the second fire is from the fire extinguisher chemicals.
A faulty light fixture caused a small fire Sept. 22, 2025 that damaged the area beneath it in the Children's Department. Some furniture and computers were damaged along with the carpeting. The library said there wasn't much damage to books and materials, but those that were damaged were professionally cleaned and returned to shelves.
The department reopened in early November. The faulty light fixture was sent to a laboratory for investigation.
Now, the library could remain closed for at least several days as investigators try to determine what's going on.
Mancuso says the second fire occurred in the same type of light fixture as the first one. She says the fixtures are the same ones that were installed when the branch opened a little over 10 years ago.
"The electricity is off to that bank of lights, and that bank of lights is different than the rest of the lighting in the branch, so my hope is that we can mitigate the issue and perhaps open the branch before we open the Children's Department like we did last time," Mancuso says.
"Now that it's happened twice, we have to dive deeper. We obviously know that there's a bigger issue here than we thought to begin with, and so we've got to figure out what's happening at the root cause ... before we can open for our staff and public to be in the building. We've got to make sure it's safe," she concludes.
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