MELFORT — Melfort was 25 years old when local citizens first formed the Melfort Public Library on the second floor of the historic post office.
Sept. 22, 2018 will mark its 90th birthday.
On Sept. 8, the Melfort Public Library will celebrate with a history display, kids games and a birthday cake.
According to Penny Markland, the librarian, it’s important to acknowledge the past.
“I don’t think most people realize the library has been serving the community of Melfort and the surrounding area for 90 years, but we have and it’s important to acknowledge the past and libraries have certainly evolved since then,” said Markland.
The first computer was brought to the library in 1994. All of the 3,000 patrons were put online, barcodes were added to all materials, and over the next few years even the card catalogue would die.
“At the beginning, I suppose libraries were mostly about books, but of course now we’re all about being a community meeting center and we’re all about providing technology to all members of the public and just evolving in that way. Whatever the community needs, the library evolves to fill the need.”
The newest changes to the Melfort Public Library, according to Markland, is the forming of the Saskatchewan Information & Library Services Consortium (SILS) in 2010. SILS allows a one province, one library card system, and means that any patron from across the province can borrow and return a book to any library within the province. With this system, interlibrary loans take a shorter amount of time as all provincially shared materials travel across Saskatchewan to wherever they are requested.
Not even Markland knows what the library will look like in the future, but she looks forward to it.
“We look forward to the next 10 years leading up to our 100th birthday,” Markland wrote in a two page history report for the anniversary. “We don’t know what the library of 2028 will look like, but we do know that the library will continue to grow and change in response to our community’s needs. It’s an exciting journey.”
