1883

The McPherson Library and Literary Association starts a lending library in Creek & Kroh's bookstore. Lenders must be shareholders in the Association, at a cost of $5 (about $140 in current dollars).

1886

The library at Creek & Kroh's has fallen into disuse, so the Reading Room and Library Association of McPherson opens a library at the SW corner of Main and Marlin. By 1893 it was dead.

1902

The Ladies Reading Circle takes up the cause and starts the McPherson Public Library in two unused rooms on an upper story of the McPherson County courthouse. The library flourishes.

1906

Ownership of the library is transferred to the city in 1905. In 1906 the city purchases the building at 111 S. Main for the new city hall and invites the library to take up residence on the second floor.

1918

The library board obtains funding to build a Carnegie library (on the site of the current library), and it is dedicated in December -- in the middle of an influenza epidemic and a month after the carnage of WWI ends.

1972

With the Carnegie library packed to overflowing and falling apart, voters approve a bond issue in 1970 to raise the old library and build a new one on the site. It opens to the public in April.

2009

McPherson voters once again affirm the importance of a quality public library in their community by approving a sales tax initiative in 2006 to renovate and expand the library. The $4.5 million project doubles the size of the facility to 27,000 square feet and is dedicated in February 2009. The one millionth visitor passes through the doors eight years later.

I have always imagined that paradise will be a kind of library.
                                    ~ Jorge Luis Borges