The library’s growth echoes what had also been the evolution of a new nation. There was no electricity until 1950, and until 1958, one of the librarian’s duties was to stoke a pot-bellied stove to warm the building for the few magical hours it opened every week. There was no place to shelve the children’s books so they lay invitingly in stacks on the floor. Ethel Hall, who, revealingly of the era, became librarian in 1942 when marriage made her ineligible to continue teaching, remembered fondly her youngest patrons sitting every which way at her feet, carefully choosing the books they wanted to take home.

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