Scottsville Free Library - History - The Scottsville Village Improvement Society

The Scottsville Village Improvement Society

Founded in 1911 to encourage all local women to participate in civic betterment efforts, the Scottsville Village Improvement Society took an active interest in the matter of a local library. With leadership and financial support from Mrs Etta Fraser Miller, the Society opened the Reading Room on Main Street. At first precisely what the name implies, a place where one could go to sit and read, the Reading Room occupied the Society's clubroom in the Woodgate home at 29 Main. Access was open to anyone, and the Reading Room's collection included books and periodicals for all ages. Public acceptance of the Reading Room encouraged the Society to expand it into a circulating library. The success of the newly formed Scottsville Free Library was measured in the more than four thousand visits during the first year.

In 1914, Mrs Miller's son, R T Miller, Jr, assisted the Society (see below) in the acquisition of Windom Hall. Two years later, the Society offered the West Room of Windom Hall to the library, as it had outgrown its space at 29 Main Street. At this juncture, the Reading Room had some five hundred volumes, all of which moved across the street into a room charitably described by its occupants as not unduly warm in winter.

The state granted the library a provisional charter in 1916 upon the establishment by Miss Sophia Miller and Miss Ruth Hanford, along with nearly two dozen other Scottsvillians, of the Scottsville Free Library Association. This enabled the library to receive its first public financial assistance, $100 in state aid, with the proviso that it be spent on the purchase of approved books. By now president of the library's Board of Trustees, Miss Miller urged the library to move to the second floor of Windom Hall, where it would have greater space. This was done in 1919, and it led to greater use of the library.