For the folks who pushed for a public library in Wichita, persistence paid off.
“They weren’t very successful the first couple of years,” Michelle Enke, the Wichita Public Library’s special collections manager, recounted during a presentation on the library’s first 150 years last month.
Discussions of a library started in 1872 but went nowhere, probably drowned out by the bustle of Wichita’s early cowtown years. The Wichita Library Association received a charter from the state of Kansas in February 1876 but does not appear to have acquired any books or a space to house them until the end of the next year, when it operated two days a week in Nereus Baldwin’s Photograph Gallery on East Douglas. In 1885, the library association became inactive and gave its books to the city.
The library’s collection was transferred to the YMCA and then the board of education before finding a home on various floors of the old City Hall.
The city’s first stand-alone library opened at 220 S. Main in 1915 thanks to $75,000 from the Carnegie Foundation. Within a decade, the library was sending out a book wagon to schools and churches, part of a program to encourage kids to read during the summer.
During the World War II years, the library stocked bookcases at aircraft plants. The first branches opened during the 1950s, starting with Oliver Square, Minisa Park and the Boulevard shopping center.
In 1967, the city opened a new Central Library at 223 S. Main, using a human conveyor belt to move books across the street. Branches continued to be built, remodeled and consolidated, bringing the current total to six.
The library has experienced a number of firsts. Its Comotara Branch, operating inside the Dillons at 21st and Rock from 1986 to 2018, was the nation’s first located inside a grocery store. The library began presenting a mini-festival of Academy Award-nominated short films in 1987, the first place outside New York and Los Angeles to do so. In 2004, the DeVore Foundation presented the library with a copy of the largest book published at that time — “Bhutan: A Visual Odyssey Across the Last Himalayan Kingdom.” It’s now displayed on the second floor of the Advanced Learning Library. That $33-million building at 711 W. Second opened in 2018 with upgraded conference and study rooms, a STEM playground, coffee shop and more.
“We have many more ways of interacting with people in this new building,” Enke said.
The library also continues to respond to what librarians describe as a crisis in traditional and digital literacy among adults and children. In 2023, the Advanced Learning Library’s children’s department became part of The Family Place Libraries network, with a new play space, books and toys. “To be frank, we don’t have all the answers today,” said Jaime Nix, director of libraries.
But it does have a new logo, designed to highlight the role the library’s role in Wichita’s past, present and future. It consists of two books that appear to have taken flight, their fluttering pages ranging in hue gold to sky blue.
Bill Gardner of Gardner Design, which created the logo, said a number of factors went into the design, including Kansas’ sunsets and skyscapes, Wichita’s aviation background and the importance of literacy.
Gardner called it “light and flight.” The logo and color scheme will appear on library cards and other branding materials.
This article was republished here with the permission of: The Active Age