The founding: the 1906 levy and the second floor of City Hall

1906–1916 · the public library established

The tax: The public library was founded by the school corporation's money. "A 1906 tax levy by the Mishawaka Board of Education provided the necessary start-up funds to establish a public library by September of 1907," the nomination records — the same institutional pattern as South Bend's school-board founding across the river, carried whole in that city's libraries record. The 2025 News-Times feature concurs in the year, dating the implementation of public library service to 1907, and the city has kept 1907 as its founding year: the library celebrated its centennial in 2007, and commercial and official directories carry "Founded 1907" to this day.

The room: The municipality gave the space. "In Mishawaka, a second floor room in the City Hall was set aside to house the library and its part time librarian, Miss Olive Long, for the next nine years from 1907 to 1916." Olive Long is the first librarian in the city's record — part-time, in one room, for the whole City Hall era. The room's stock at its opening is given by the 2025 feature as "only 1,000 books"; the nomination's first count is later and larger — by 1914, when the city began courting Carnegie, the City Hall space "was cramped and included, at this time, 6,000 volumes and no room for reading tables." The two figures are printed as their sources place them: a thousand at the start on the feature's account, six thousand by 1914 on the nomination's. Nine years of growth in a borrowed room is the founding's whole story, and its end was visible early: a library with no room for reading tables had already become an argument for a building.

Sources:

1. Fine, Carnegie Library nomination (1997), section 8 — the 1906 Board of Education levy; the public library established by September 1907; the City Hall room; Miss Olive Long, 1907–1916; 6,000 volumes by 1914.
2. Evans, "Pages in Transit," South Bend News-Times (2025) — service implemented in 1907; the room's 1,000 books.
3. South Bend Tribune, centennial coverage, January 2007, as indexed in the Michiana Business & Research Library catalogue — the library opened in the old City Hall in 1907 and celebrated its centennial in 2007.