A power outage at Parks Library will cause several rooms to close early for at least a couple days, library officials said.

A major circuit breaker that was linked to the upper lobby, the map room, the periodical room and the south third of the seven tiers blew around 3:30 p.m. on Wednesday.

“The library has many electrical circuits that control portions of the building; the circuit covered these areas,” said Joan Mueller, library associate at Parks Library.

Until the power is fixed, the map room will close at 5 p.m., the periodical room at 6 p.m., and the tiers will remain open with the aid of flashlights that are available for checkout at the front desk.

“The map room is closing at 5 p.m. because it has absolutely no power; it’s an interior room, but it’s pretty dark in there when the sun goes down,” Mueller said. “The tiers we are leaving open and issuing flashlights at the circulation desk if patrons need one.”

Olivia Madison, dean of library services, said two computers at the desk in the periodical room are working.

The breaker, which was located in one of the older sections of the library, was completely burned up when the circuit blew.

“When there is a problem in the circuit, it burns up and shuts the power off,” Mueller said. “It’s an old circuit breaker, and they have to search around for the part to make it work.”

Originally, it looked like the affected sections of the library might not get power for up to two weeks, but a replacement part was located Thursday, said Wayne Pedersen, acting head of access services at Parks Library.

“The part will hopefully be in [today],” he said. “We hope to have everything back to normal by late Friday night or early Saturday morning.”

Pedersen said maintenance staff will be installing the new part during library off-hours because the replacement procedure will require the whole electrical system in the building to be shut down.

As of yet, Pedersen said there had not been many complaints from students, except for concerns about the periodical room.

“I’m hearing some complaints about getting into the periodical room,” he said. “And we know, that’s a key service, but after 7 it is just pitch dark in there. We have to close it for safety reasons.”

Library staff is doing everything possible to help out students while the power is still off, Pedersen said.

“We’ve got staff up there [in the tiers] to help people find things,” he said. “We’re just trying to patch things together as well as we can.”

Pedersen said it was the biggest power outage he’d ever seen at the library. “This is the first time I’ve seen something this severe since I’ve been here,” he said.

He also noted library staff might consider updating the electrical systems in some of the older sections of the building after this mishap.

“That’s something we’re going to have to take a look at because we definitely wouldn’t want to have to deal with this again,” he said.