This address was originally given by Dorothy Ballard, a member of the core group that organized the library effort and a signer of the Articles of Incorporation, to the Friends of the Johnson County Library in May of 1982. It has been edited for length and clarity.
The Johnson County Library story is an exciting one and I was one privileged to witness its unfolding.
If you have moved to Johnson County since 1956, it is hard to imagine this County without a library.
Throughout the Governance and Structure Committee study of the Johnson County Library on which I served, the question often posed was “Who will speak for the Library?”
For an overview of the County Library and its development, let me take you back almost 30 years. In 1952 the Johnson County population was 62,000, having tripled in the last 10 years. There was a housing boom that followed World War II and J.C. Nichols, one of the largest developers, had just been awarded the Best Planned Community in the U.S. with their Prairie Village development. The many new homes meant many new families and almost every household had children. There was only a handful of cities in the county, separate high school and many elementary school districts. Olathe, the county seat, was the only city providing all the usual services of a city, including a library. Therefore the fast growing northeast part of the county sought urban services through county government – fire protection, sewers, water, etc. – which took special legislation to accomplish.
When an active Prairie school PTA saw the pressing need for library services, they organized to petition the county to place a proposal for a County Library on the November 1952 ballot — the Election that gave Dwight Eisenhower the U.S. Presidency.
WHO SPOKE FOR THE LIBRARY?? The voters spoke 4 to 1 to approve the proposal for a Johnson County Library District, excluding the City of Olathe. The first 5-member Library Board was appointed by the County Commissioners in March 1953. All the first Board Members had been active in the petitioning procedure — Tom Parrish, Rev. Ira Bales, Dorothy Hoff, Kay Robeson, and Dorothy Snyder. The Library Board was charged to establish library services with persons in the county. The Library Board developed a budget for a 1 1/2 mill levy for a County Library, the county commissioners could not provide for library funds within the 4 mill levy allowed for general obligation funding. Expectations were dashed.
WHO WOULD SPEAK FOR THE LIBRARY? It was the people again. A Johnson County Library Volunteer Committee took up the challenge — they collected books and magazines, found donated space in the communities, and catalogued and acted as librarian volunteers. So from the opening of the first Volunteer Library in the County in June 1953, some eleven other sites were functioning throughout the county a year later in the fall of 1954.
Johnson County at that time had a population of 105,000 and was represented in the legislature by one representative, Clark Kuppinger, and one State Senator, John Anderson. AGAIN THE PEOPLE SPOKE UP. As voters went to the polls in November 1954, they were asked to sign petitions addressed to the state legislators to introduce legislation that would take on mill of the library levy outside of the county aggregate. This legislation was passed by the 1955 legislature. It had been three years after voter approval for a County Library that the first tax money, $32,000, was received for library services and the first Director of the Johnson County Library was appointed by the Library Board. In October 1955, Shirley Brother, as County Librarian, set up an office with a borrowed card table and chair and telephone in an old post office building in Merriam. the Volunteer Library Committee turned over its collection and agreed to staff the site libraries until January, when the tax funds would become available. A year later there were 5 Library Branches and a bookmobile serving the county.
In 1956, a building was built to library specifications on the Antioch Library site which was then leased to the Library. Thus the Headquarters Library was able to open in November 1956. The Volunteer Library Association was dissolved and the Friends of the Johnson County Library came into being in 1956.
When in 1958, the library funding was found to be woefully inadequate, Friends of the Johnson County Library collected 7,713 signatures to again petition the legislators to allow a levy of 1 1/2 mills outside the county aggregate for library services. On resignation of the County Librarian, the Board appointed Mary Moore from the system as County Librarian in October 1959.
In 1961, the Library Board proposed the first Library Bond Issue for $746,000. AGAIN THE VOTERS SPOKE — YES WE NEED LIBRARY BUILDINGS! The proposal passed. This enabled the Board to buy and enlarge Antioch Headquarters Library and purchase a site, build and equip the Corinth Library, which opened in 1963.
With Mary Moore’s resignation, the Library Board appointed LeRoy Fox as Director of Johnson County Library. Roy came in July 1966 from the State Librarian position where he had developed the Kansas Information Circuit for statewide Interlibrary loan System and had been instrumental in securing legislation to establish seven Regional Library Systems in Kansas. There were pressing needs for services, books and facilities. The first long-range plan was developed; and a second bond issue was taken to the voters for $1,501,000. This was passed in February 1967 by a 70% majority. AGAIN THE PEOPLE SPOKE. These bonds provided for opening Cedar Roe Library in 1969 and Oak Park Library in 1971.
In 1975 the Technical Services Building was opened. And in November 1979, the VOTERS AGAIN SPOKE TO APPROVE A $4 MILION BOND ISSUE. This resulted in the recent ground breaking for four new Branch Libraries — Blue Valley, De Soto, Gardner, and Spring Hill, as well as plans to expand Antioch and Oak Park. The late 1970s and 1980s have seen great expansion of library services into areas of telecommunications and interlibrary loan networking.
-Dorothy Ballard, Johnson County Library founding member
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