Jul 28, 2014
88°
Mostly Cloudy

While the City of Campbell Celebrates 60, Its Library Hits 118

A history of the Campbell Library, as told by Cheryl Houts, Campbell Community Librarian.

While the City of Campbell Celebrates 60, Its Library Hits 118 While the City of Campbell Celebrates 60, Its Library Hits 118 While the City of Campbell Celebrates 60, Its Library Hits 118 While the City of Campbell Celebrates 60, Its Library Hits 118

The had its beginnings in February 1894 when Judge and Mrs. Milton Myrick donated $50.00 for the founding of a free public library if the public raised a matching $50.00. The local YMCA had a book collection that they donated as a foundation for the library which was housed in a building across from the Congregational Church.

In 1923 the Campbell Country Woman’s Club constructed a building for their club and part of it was dedicated to the library, which opened with 4,500 volumes in its collection. The Campbell Country Woman’s Club has continued to this day to provide support to the library over the years.

In 1961 the library moved to larger quarters on the northwest corner of Campbell Avenue at Central Avenue; and in 1967 the passage of a bond by the citizens of Campbell made the construction of a new library building possible. The grand opening of the library (with a collection of 89,000 volumes) located where it is today, at 77 Harrison Avenue, was held in 1975.  In 1989 the building was remodeled and the library expanded to two floors.

In August 2011 the library received an interior facelift with new carpet, paint and public furniture. The library has embraced technology and now boasts automated materials handling equipment that checks items in, gives patrons a receipt and sorts them for faster return to the shelves. There are also self-checkout machines located on both levels of the library as well as free Wi-Fi for those who bring their own laptops to the library. 

Today the library houses a collection of 201,300 items and circulation is over 800,000 items per year. Campbell Library is a Santa Clara County Library District library and patrons have access to materials in the other eight locations throughout the district (Los Altos and Woodland, Cupertino, Saratoga, Milpitas, Morgan Hill and Gilroy – a total of 1,842,000 items). 

The electronic items in Santa Clara County Library District are also ever-expanding and are available to those with a Santa Clara County Library card and PIN. Downloadable e-books, downloadable audiobooks, and many other electronic resources are available 24/7.

Brainfuse is a homework tutoring resource for kindergarteners to college. Students participate through online chat with a certified tutor. English and Spanish speaking tutors are available each day from 1 to 10 p.m. from your home computer or from a computer in the library.

Discover Campbell Library today! Beginning Monday April 30 :

  • Monday: 1-9:00 p.m.
  • Tuesday: 1-9:00 p.m.
  • Wednesday: 10:00 a.m.-6:00 p.m.
  • Thursday: 10:00 a.m.-6:00 p.m.
  • Friday: 10:00 a.m.-6:00 p.m.
  • Saturday: 10:00 a.m.-6:00 p.m.
  • Sunday: CLOSED

Don’t miss updates from Patch!
http://patch.com/california/campbell/campbell-celebrates-60-campbell-library-hits-118
patch.com
crawl=CC-MAIN-2014-23
62921
application/http; msgtype=response
sha1:EDOCGU6X2KSIVDJRVET6UES7H5X6REKK
<urn:uuid:b8a77126-66a9-4cbc-837f-86cd3f27c0d2>
2014-07-28T22:38:46Z
54.209.14.69
sha1:UHAWTVIIW56BTXTFTSHWRY7RGNALBOBM
<urn:uuid:fb90eb79-70be-4ffb-b7e9-5cbd5e1d0b77>
http://patch.com/california/campbell/campbell-celebrates-60-campbell-library-hits-118
response
<urn:uuid:fc3e0b8e-de68-416a-bfcf-8ee7f4c937c8>
robots: classic
hostname: ip-10-146-231-18.ec2.internal
software: Nutch 1.6 (CC)/CC WarcExport 1.0
isPartOf: CC-MAIN-2014-23
operator: CommonCrawl Admin
description: Wide crawl of the web with URLs provided by Blekko for July 2014
publisher: CommonCrawl
format: WARC File Format 1.0
conformsTo: http://bibnum.bnf.fr/WARC/WARC_ISO_28500_version1_latestdraft.pdf