SIDNEY — As the Aug. 9 grand opening of the renovated and expanded Amos Memorial Public Library approaches, the Shelby County Libraries is celebrating its growth from a group of interested investors in the 1860s to a modern library with versatility in design and function to meet the informational and leisure pursuits of the city and surrounding county.
News clippings and historical documents housed at the Sidney location reveal that the history of today’s library began in 1869 when the Sidney Lyceum and Library Association formed as a stockholding company at $25 a share. The Lyceum opened in 1870 at the southwest corner of North Street and Ohio Avenue, the site of the current post office. In 1879 the library moved to the Monumental Building at the northwest corner of Court Street and Ohio Avenue and remained in service there until the middle of the next century.
In 1944, initial funds for a library building came from the Delia Amos will. The Amos family continued to add funds over the next 12 years and, later, local businesses donated remaining money for furniture in the new building.
Then, in 1954, the state librarian of Ohio, Walter Brahm, completed a library study, including projections for local library use. He noted that the 1934 book collection consisted of 15,089 volumes, and the 1953 collections had grown to 34,206, which was consistent with the statistical growth of libraries, indicating that book collections approximately double every 20 years. No AV or digital collections were anticipated at that time, so the recommendations included planning for 80,000 volumes “so the building could be enlarged thirty or forty years from now when additional space may be needed.” Planned space was for shelving, seating, and service, with a garage and auditorium also in the works.
The razing costs for the William Piper residence on the northwest corner of Miami Avenue and North Street were donated in 1956, and the site was then leveled and prepared for the 1958 opening of the Amos Memorial Public Library.
The library system in Shelby County experienced a burst of growth in the next few decades. The Jackson Center library had already opened in 1941, but in 1959, the Anna library opened, as well, and the first bookmobile transported library materials to other locations in the county.
The village of Botkins soon followed suit, opening its library in 1969, and Fort Loramie not much later, opening a location in 1977.
In the meantime, the Gerlach property in the 1960s and the Salvation Army Citadel in 1971, both north of the Amos library, were razed to permit future expansion.
Then, in the 1980s, two circumstances altered the vision for the future of the library. The first was the coming of the computer age. The era of computers brought changes to how libraries provided information and services to a modern population. The library had to adapt in hardware, wiring, software, and technology personnel.
The second was a 5-year, 2-mill operating levy on the ballot in November of 1984. Sidney school district voters defeated the measure which would have generated $450,000 beginning Jan. 1, 1985. A news release from library director Larry Frank, in April 1984 explained that the 1985 budget was projected to be $615,000 with a state intangibles tax providing 55-65 percent of that budget. However, the intangibles tax would be eliminated Jan. 1, 1986, and then the library would be funded from the state’s general fund at the 1985 amount, which would not match the need.
The library was reaching its thirty-year maximum, established as an expectation in the 1950s, but the financial picture, hobbled by a defeated local levy and burdened by the technology revolution, did not allow for even the thought of new construction.
In 1992, the Russia community opened its first library, and in 2000, the Anna library moved to a new building.
But in Sidney, the library struggled to find ways to fulfill its mission, unable to do much more structurally than cosmetic and patchwork upgrades. Free internet access became available in 1998 and Wi-Fi in 2007, but these measures made the need for an updated and expanded library even more obvious and pressing. The use of the library had changed and the space had to be reconfigured within the limits of the mid-century imagination and within the allowances of a sturdy but ageing building.
The first meetings for a new addition and expansion were held in 2012 with KrM Architecture+ of Anderson, Indiana, a company chosen from a group of architectural firms that submitted plans. Soon following, in 2013, was a feasibility study by Goettler Associates to determine the potential for a capital fund-raising campaign.
The Libraries Build Strong Communities campaign launched in the spring of 2014 at a time when the need for a new building was nearly thirty years past its original thirty-year functional expectation. At the start of the campaign, the library housed 98,000 items, circulation had tripled from 105,000 in 1958 to 311,000 in 2013, and the library contained the only computer lab available to the entire community.
After a successful campaign to secure individual and corporate funding, groundbreaking for the $4.8 million addition and renovation of the Amos Memorial Public Library was held in April of 2016. Residents of Sidney and Shelby County now have a library with modern capabilities in technology and rooms for small and large group meetings or conferences. Teens and children have their own spaces with dedicated materials and programming areas. At the completion of construction, the Shelby County Libraries can provide current residents with ease of access in their informational and leisure pursuits today and for many years to come.
