Blaine Library celebrates 30 years in its current home

Volunteer effort culminated in library opening in 1988

By Oliver Lazenby

From microfiche to the Internet, cassette tapes to digital downloads, the Blaine Library has come a long way in the last 30 years. Despite changes in how people read and check out items, the library has remained in the same space. It opened at 610 3rd Street in November 1988 after a four-year fundraising effort by the Friends of the Blaine Library.

To celebrate that effort and its anniversary, the library is hosting an open house from 2 to 4 p.m., on Sunday, November 4, with music, refreshments and historical information about the library.

The current location was a big leap forward for the Blaine Library. Before the move, its entire collection resided in a 1,000-square-foot space in city hall. That space was so full of books that a bookshelf blocked the bathroom door and had to be moved when patrons wanted to use it.

“It felt like walking into a closet that was jam-packed with books,” said Elisabeth Angell, who began volunteering with the Friends of the Blaine Library in 1988 and served on the board for 25 years.

To make the move to 3rd Street, the Friends of the Blaine Library had to raise about $430,000 to remodel a building known as the “old pink barn,” according to archived newspaper articles. The city donated the steel-walled building to the Friends. It was previously used as a shop and for storage (the city had to find a new place for its parade float, according to a 1986 Friends of the Blaine Library press release).

Starting in 1984, the Friends group raised the money through grants, donations and a city bond.

The move made a world of difference in the services the library system could provide.

“It was unbelievable,” she said. “Circulation picked up and a lot more people started coming to the library.”

The current, 5,400-square-foot space allowed the collection to nearly triple. The library got a teen reading area, a children’s area, more magazines, microfiche machines, catalog machines, a meeting area and more.

In its new home, the library filled many more community needs. Its meeting room has served as a concert venue; the library owned a baby grand piano and hosted intimate music recitals until the school district built its performing arts center.

The old city hall building isn’t the first chapter in the library’s history. According to a history compiled by Richardson and kept in the Blaine Library, the Blaine Free Library opened on Peace Portal Drive in 1911. It moved a few times before opening in city hall in 1924. At that time, the city funded it with $450 a year and the library had 4,261 books.

Now, the number of books isn’t important to many library patrons, who come to use computers or check out digital items. Though it has lost some of its roles – the library sold the baby grand, for example – it still fills many needs, from story times and after school programs to meetings and computer tutorials.

“It opens up a whole world to an inquisitive mind,” Angell said. “I really think the library fills an essential function in a city.”