NATCHEZ — Early Wednesday afternoon, Armstrong Library employees worked with fans at their feet.

“This is nothing,” Library Director Susan Cassagne said. “Last week, it was 96 degrees in my office.”

The library had to close early Thursday at aproximately 11 a.m. and Friday at 4:15 p.m. because the air conditioner wasn’t working right, she said.

Cassagne said she was worried about the $5,000 server overheating, which could cause it to crash. The server contains all the library’s information, from cardholders to where to find each of the thousands of books. So, she ran a diagnostics test.

“It was 3 degrees from crashing,” Cassagne said.

The decision to shut it down wasn’t a hard one, she said. There were barely any patrons.

“People were walking in the door, turning around and walking back out,” Cassagne said. “I knew we were in trouble when I went downstairs and saw a woman working on the computer with a cold damp cloth on the back of her neck.”

After temporary repairs, the temperature had dropped to the high 70s in the building Wednesday.

This isn’t the first summer the library air conditioning system has malfunctioned. Last year, the library had to close for three days in a row, she said.

It doesn’t help that the 15-year-old system is trying to cool “a big, brick oven,” Cassagne said. The brick building has little shade, and when temperatures reach the high 90s, it can’t cool down at night.

The city, which owns the building, arranges the system to be fixed whenever she calls, Cassagne said.

“The city has been very cooperative,” she said.

After contacting the city Wednesday, Cassagne said they had plans to flush the air conditioning system and perform maintenance to make the building cooler.

“That should give us some immediate relief,” Cassagne said. “It’s not a solution to the whole problem, but it gets us by.”

Cassagne said she hadn’t talked to the city about it, but she would like to see a survey done of the system, air ducts and all.

That way, the library could apply for grants to eventually have it replaced.

Mayor Phillip West said he wasn’t aware of the situation, but the city was more than happy to do what it could to help.

“It’s something we’ll address once we have enough information on it,” West said. “(The city) would have to make sure it was done, whether the funds come from the city or some other available funding source we could apply to.”

Hopefully, with the maintenance work, the system will cool the building enough to keep it open, Cassagne said.

“I guess we’ll just have to play it by ear,” she said.