The Shaw community’s interim library finally opened this weekend, nearly three years after the neighborhood’s full-service branch closed and six months after a prefabricated trailer was installed on Rhode Island Avenue.

Balloons hanging from the railing were the only indication Sunday that the 4,200-square-foot interim Watha T. Daniel Shaw branch library was in operation — the phone number had yet to be activated, and most residents apparently had no idea that the doors were open. The D.C. Library initially promised to have the facility up and running by June and then by mid-July, but power problems and other issues pushed back the timeline by months, to the community’s dismay.