In 1965, before the Internet and wide use of computers, efforts began to make library books more available throughout Kansas.
Regional library systems were conceived, and a year later the Southeast Kansas Library System became a reality with a vote of the State Library Advisory Board on June 27, 1966.
Lucile Wagner, Iola librarian and an icon in the field, was responsible for local efforts, having traveled to communities across southeast Kansas to sell the idea.
The SEKLS, headquartered at Iola’s Public Library since day one, will celebrate its 50th anniversary this month.
To mark the milestone, Roger Carswell, director of Iola’s library and the SEKLS, wrote a book that gives extensive history of the system. Appropriately, its title is “Booking along since ’66.”
FRIDAY’S signature event gathered scores of librarians and other personnel from participating libraries at St. John’s parish hall for a banquet. History was mentioned liberally and the bookish crew exchanged stories.
The 1950s and 1960s were heady times in the library world, Carswell wrote in his book. The country was prospering during the days following World War II and although the ’60s saw Vietnam War protests and elevated prominence of the drug culture, the economy was steaming along. It wasn’t until the 1970s that the surge of oil prices brought the U.S. economy to a halt.
A study in 1956 revealed nationwide that more than 26 million rural residents lacked library service — 300 rural counties had no public libraries — and 50 million Americans had inadequate library access.
As part of President Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society, the Library Services and Construction Act was enacted. Several attempts to improve rural services were made in Kansas, but it wasn’t until State Librarian LeRoy Fox seized on the idea of what Carswell calls a “concept simple and logical, but also breathtakingly bold and sweeping in scope” that regional library systems were born.
His proposal was to support regional systems with tax money from areas that didn’t have libraries. Towns having ones, such as Iola, had supported them with property tax money for years.
Libraries remain autonomous in their control, with the regional system headquartered in an established library. In southeast Kansas’ case, it was Iola, and has been all its 50 years.
Wagner was the first director, followed by Ray Willson in 1967 and Carswell in 1993. They also have had managerial duties with Iola’s library.
Several expansions on the west side of the Iola library have been made to accommodate the SEKRLS staff. Interlibrary loan with larger libraries also is a part of the system, meaning a person living in a small community, such as Savonburg, has the same opportunity to have access to an obscure volume as someone in Iola or Chanute.
The system has kept pace with technology and member libraries are privy to enhanced and non-book materials.
