This Clute Library Website, not unlike the Library itself, is under continuing construction.

The approximately 14,000 volumes which constitute the central Library have traveled from London and Maine to Telluride, though a permanent location is yet to be found.

Very briefly, the rehabilitation of the basement (108 by 28 feet, and above ground for part of its length), where the collection was going to be housed, does not seem feasible for a variety of reasons. We are in the process of exploring alternative sites—some in Telluride, some just outside of town.

Whatever the final location, the Library will include conference/meeting spaces, a bookshop with open access to an adjacent restaurant with patio, and the offices of the Telluride Institute (which is not large but very active). In its most ambitious manifestation, the Library will serve as a kind of knowledge hub at the core of a new interdisciplinary Campus which will support research and education in the areas of environmental science, indigenous knowledge, and cultural expression. The overall design is meant to dramatize the interaction of all these activities and functions, both rhetorically and in terms of actual synergies on the ground.