News: Granton – Combined Library Celebrates 10 Years (Aug 2022)

Transcriber: Stan

Surnames: Heiting, Samson, Schwarze

----Source: TRG (Abbotsford, Clark Co., Wis.) 10 Aug 2022

A decade ago, the Granton School Library combined with the village’s Samson Memorial Library into one entity, the Granton Community Library, which is located in the buildings at the Granton Area School District. A special anniversary celebration of the milestone will be held at the library on Aug. 18, and the public is invited to attend.

The Granton Community Library was originally formed through the combination of the Granton School Library, and the Samson Memorial Library, formerly located in Granton’s downtown area in the building now housing the Granton Community Store and village offices. The public library had been founded through the efforts of Mrs. Augusta Lee Samson, an 1867 Granton school teacher who donated the first books and $1,000 over the course of several years for the purpose of bringing a library to the area where she once taught.

The first iteration of the library was located in the drug store owned by Mr. and Mrs. Durward Schwarze, officially opening on Feb. 11, 1942. A couple years later, in July of 1944, the library was moved into the former jewelry store owned by Alvin Reichert, who sold the building to the village of Granton for $700 to use as a library. This library was then given the name Samson Memorial, to honor the efforts made by Mrs. Samson over the years to create a public library for the village.

Afterwards, the Samson Memorial Library continued to grow its volume of books, but never in size, eventually forcing the village and library board to look at options to give the public library more space. During their search, they received an offer from the Granton School District to combine their collections into one community library. The feasibility of this proposal was investigated, and after seeing the potential of such a partnership, the two libraries worked together to form their new combined service.

At the time of its inception, the Granton Community Library was a library of a rare kind in Wisconsin. Collaboration between public and school libraries were not as common then, but joining together gave benefits to both the school district and the public library. Kay Heiting, the current director of the Granton Community Library, recalled how it all came together.

“On July 11, 2012, the library board, the village board and the school board met to discuss moving the library into the school space,” she said. “They drafted an agreement that laid out the guidelines for the three entities to follow. In August of that year there was a ribbon cutting that opened the Granton Community Library.”

Heiting also recalled the amount of work that needed to be done to initially put the two libraries resources together.

“One the biggest tasks that we needed to accomplish before the transition was updating the barcodes on all of the materials,” she said. “The public library was not automated at the time, so everything in the public library needed to be barcoded. The school barcodes did not work with the public system, so those all needed to be added as well. We hosted a volunteer weekend to help with the task. We had over 15 volunteers, and they got everything barcoded in a weekend. I thought it would take weeks. It still amazes me how the community and students stepped up to make the transition easier. It is still one of my favorite memories of the library.”

Since then, the cooperation between the three parties to keep the Granton Community Library going remains strong. Heiting said their agreement is reviewed annually and was originally set for a 10-year partnership which was recently voted to be continued.

A celebration of their decade-long partnership will be held on Aug. 18 from 6-8 p.m. at the Granton Community Library. For any questions about the upcoming event, please contact the library by phone, 715- 238-5250; e-mail, director@granton.lib.wi.us  ; or by visiting their website at https://granton.catalog.wvls.org/ .