The new downtown Library— Is it a white
elephant?

It’s no secret that the Minneapolis Public Library is in very tough straits: 25 percent of staff laid off, three libraries closed and still not enough money to keep the remaining 12 libraries open for reasonable hours. This is the same MPL that was recently hailed as one of the most used library systems in the country.
MPL has both popular library and research library functions, holding 1.15 million volumes with an average of 1.6 copies/volume. MPL also has extensive online databases and depth in its primary research materials. By contrast, Hennepin County Library has some 300,000 volumes with an average of six copies/volume. HCL is termed a popular library, having a limited research collection.

Up until the late 1950s, MPL was a much larger system, having four or five more branches than it currently operates, in addition to the hospital and factory substations, and the branches in public schools. These were put in place by Gratia Countryman, the renowned Director of MPL from 1904 to 1936, who hewed to the Carnegie mission of spreading literacy to all. In the ’50s and ’60s, MPL shrank to the 15 branches it has now.

Beginning in the mid-1960s, there was a massive movement of people out of Minneapolis to the suburbs. However, since Hennepin County’s library system was still in its early days, the county budgeted money to support MPL because county residents used MPL, particularly the Central Library, extensively. The original annual support was $1-plus million, but it decreased in subsequent years. In the late ’60s, Hennepin County tried to force a merger that resulted in many years of controversy. Hennepin County decided to continue some support to MPL for two or three more years. Between 1970 and 1975, county support was replaced by MELSA, a federation of 102 libraries in the seven-county metro area. MELSA’s federal and state funding supports library usage for 52 percent of all Minnesotans.