History of our library Pt 1

I was at the laminator today laminating signs, so I was staring at this picture on the wall commemorating 100 years of service for the library 1898 to 1998. That means the year 2008 brings 110 years the library has been serving Brigham City residents. I thought you might be interested in a little history of the library.

In 1897, Mansfield Snow, the editor of the Brigham City Bugler urged that a public reading room be established in Brigham. Four wards of the LDS church took up the project in 1898. Money had to be raised to build the library, pay a salary, and buy books. Dances, bazaars, and dinners were held to raise money, donations were made. The city donated the lot in the center of town about where we are now. Construction began.

This first building was one room with one wall of books. The town telephone was placed in the corner of the building and anyone could come there to use it. The maxium expenses, at this time, were $200 and these were paid by donations, fund raisers and the telephone company. Eventually, the library funded itself by charging 5 cents for each book checked out. When this ceased and the phone was taken out, the library had no funding and eventually had to be closed for a year in 1911.

In 1913 the Mutual Improvement Association library was deeded to Brigham City and funding for library services was then provided by the city. Before this, the collection numbered from 4,000 to 5,000 volumes of which many were "dead material" that should have been removed but were left to take up space and present the appearance of a well-filled library. Most of these materials had been donated and were mostly LDS publications. Also, up to this time, no system had been used to classify the books and they were just placed in any manner on a shelf that had room.

After the city took over the library, the collection increased to 15,000 books and, thanks to the librarian, Ida Young, the collection was organized according to the dewey decimal system.

Next installment - Brigham gets a Carnegie Library.
Susan