Ground was broken yesterday on Venice’s new library, the new William H. Jervey Jr. Venice Public Library. Jervey, a retired University of Central Florida professor, committed $1 million to create an endowment for the new library. The old Venice Library was closed by Sarasota County after 51 years of service because of persistent mold issues. The new library will have nearly 20,000 square feet of usable space, a 130-person meeting room, separate adult, teen, and youth reading areas, tutoring rooms, and a bookstore. The project, in all, is budgeted at $8.8 million. The building itself is set to be finished about a year from now and open by fall of 2018.