Morton Grove Public Library - History

History

The Morton Grove Public Library was established in 1938 with federal Works Progress Administration (WPA) financial assistance supplementing community action and in response to the educational and cultural needs of a growing community of interested and spirited citizens during the Great Depression years. Beginning with a volunteer staff and 300 books collected through donations placed in a barrel at Village Hall, the first Library was opened using floor space in a store at 6100 Lincoln Avenue. The Library remained at this location for about seven years until the owner of the store needed to expand.

The Library was moved to another store located at 6244 Lincoln Avenue. Volunteers manned the desk and the Library remained at this location for three years when it was forced to find a new location.

The Library made its second move to a temporary home in 1948 when it relocated to the second floor of the old Callie Avenue fire station. The Fire Department's need to reclaim that space spurred efforts to obtain a permanent library site by concerned citizens who saw the need to develop and construct a permanent building.

Monument Park had been purchased by the Women's War Working Circle as the site for their Doughboy statue, erected in 1921 to honor World War I veterans. Because of this interest in the Library, the Women's War Working Circle deeded the park property to the village, provided that the property be used as the site of a library. Village residents' 1949 approval of a $33,000 bond issue paved the way for the construction of Morton Grove's first permanent library building, in Monument Park, Georgiana and Lincoln Avenues.

The Morton Grove Public Library was dedicated and opened in its permanent facility on February 3, 1952. The new building had 1,500 square feet (140 m2) of floor space and housed a collection of over 4,000 books. By 1954, with Morton Grove growing rapidly in the post-World War II housing boom, the collection had grown to 5,300 volumes with an annual circulation of 21,000 items.

In June 1956, the basement level of the new Library was remodeled for use as a Children's Room.

In 1962, after a decade of rapid growth, the residents approved a $277,000 referendum for the construction of a 11,500-square-foot (1,070 m2) addition which included a room for educational and cultural programs and meetings. The building grew to 13,000 square feet (1,200 m2) and provided seating for 110 patrons and room for a 55,000 volume collection.

In 1965, the Library was one of twenty-two founding member libraries of the North Suburban Library System (NSLS). NSLS enabled member libraries to exchange information, share resources and establish a reciprocal borrowing program, which has led, through the years, to the practice of honoring library cards of residents throughout the state. NSLS also organized a Central Serials Service (CSS) to permit broad public access to articles from numerous periodicals. CSS was housed in the basement of the Library's facility until 1994, when loss of state funding led to its closing.

In 1969, a $240,000 referendum was passed for the remodeling of the lower level of the building into a new Children's Department. An outdoor sunken garden accessible through glass doors brightened the lower level area. The newly remodeled children's room opened on June 15, 1970.

The most recent expansion of the Library's facility was opened in 1980 and included a 160-seat auditorium and additional office space.

In response to the burgeoning interest in the Internet, the Morton Grove Public Library registered the domain name "webrary.org" and the first version of the library's website went public in 1995. The website receives over 7,000 hits per day.

In 1997, the Library became one of ten founding member libraries of NorthStarNet, a community information network and hosting service created by the North Suburban Library System (NSLS) to help libraries develop relationships with their local community groups by aiding those groups in establishing a Web presence. The Morton Grove Community Network] site provided access and contact information on businesses and organizations relevant to the residents of Morton Grove. In 2007, after NSLS ceased hosting the NorthStarNet program, the Library continued to maintain the community site until 2009.

In addition to the website, the Morton Grove Public Library also offers virtual reference and digital reference services. The Library was an early participant in AskAway, a consortium of Illinois and Wisconsin libraries, but now offers Meebo instant messaging services when the Library is open. In July, 2012 the Library began using LibraryH3lp for its chat reference service when Meebo ceased operation.

To augment the Library's communication to its community, a number of blogs were begun, each with a specific target audience: adults, teens, pre-teens, and parents of younger children. In 2012, the Morton Grove Public Library decided to focus on more of the social networking outlets available aimed at communicating to its community. There is now an active presence on Facebook, Twitter, FourSquare, YouTube, Flickr and Tumblr and they have phased out their blogs.

A major presence on these social networking entities is Mr. M (as in "M"orton Grove), who began life as the avatar, or persona, of the Library's Twitter account, where he served as a digital guide prospecting the modern world's information deluge for the exceptional, the curious and the enlightening. And yet somehow this wasn't enough to satisfy his ambitions, and so he decided to set up a second home in the library's online catalog, where, while exploring the world unfolding between the covers of books, he also finds it very rewarding to expound upon some of the catalog's features, both new and old, in order to help library users share in his discoveries.