Yesterday and Today

The first meeting of the Friends of the Santa Barbara Public Library was held on May 1, 1952.  Since that first meeting many advances and changes have occurred in the world, and in our lives, that were unimaginable at the time.  The past seven decades have brought us the polio vaccine, the birth control pill, organ transplants, and DNA sequencing.  We now have smart phones, ATMs, bar code scanning, solar energy, electric/hybrid vehicles, and digital books.  We have watched as a man walked on the moon, and women and men advanced science while in an orbiting space station for months at a time.

Over the years, the Library, through the support and funding from the Friends has also seen many advances and changes. The Library started its collection of long playing records in 1955. That was also the year a $300,000 bequest made it possible to renovate and remodel the library. We have provided the seed money first for the Library’s books on tape then for Books and Music on CD; first for video tape and then later the DVD collection. We acquired drive-up book bins, equipped the Faulkner Gallery for a wide range of activities, with gifts of a movie projector, sound apparatus, chairs and a lectern.

Through the generous gifts from the Friends, the Library was provided with many extras from clocks to patio beautification to book fairs; from large print books to radio programs, from an aquarium for the children’s room to culturally-rich music, dance and art programs, and of course book collections. In addition, funding from the Friends supports the STEAM program and library staff development. The Friends are committed to funding the annual wish list and prioritization identified by the Santa Barbara Public Library.

In 2002, during the Golden Jubilee of the Friends of the Library, the Board recognized and acknowledged all that had been accomplished in the past 50 years. We also realized that in order to insure that our Library and our community were positioned to embrace the advances and changes that will come in the next 50 years, an endowment fund would be needed. Several bequests and gifts have given us the seed money for our Endowment Fund which will serve our community for generations to come.

As book lovers and lovers of reading, the Friends believe that a good library is essential to the intellectual and cultural growth and well being of our community.