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1880–1889
The legal road: A free library needed a tax, and a tax needed a law. The 1920 civic history records that in 1880 "South Bend and a number of other cities sent in a petition to the legislature, requesting authority to establish a free public library, to be maintained by taxes," and that "this law was passed in 1883." Eight years after the law, the city's school board acted on it: in 1888 the South Bend Board of Education passed a resolution providing for the establishment of a public library, as the library's own history records. The library thus began as a school corporation's library — founded, in the county article's summary of the record, "by the South Bend School Corporation." It was established, the 1920 account notes dryly, with neither room, books, nor money, "you see the money could not be had until the next year." The gap between the resolution and the first tax dollar is where the next entry begins.
Sources:
- Brown, The Story of South Bend (1920), ch. XIV — the 1880 petition, the 1883 law, and the library established in 1888 without room, books or money.
- St. Joseph County Public Library, "History of the St. Joseph County Public Library" — the Board of Education's 1888 resolution.
- Wikipedia, "St. Joseph County, Indiana," Public Libraries section — the library "founded by the South Bend School Corporation."