Editor’s note: With the recent news reports that Hennepin County’s acquisition of the Minneapolis Public Library system is costing $3.5 million more than expected, we thought readers might find it interesting, if not illuminating, to view this whole merger business with a little historical perspective, by way of this annotated timeline from the spring issue of MOQ.

On January 1, the 122-year old independent Minneapolis Library Board of Trustees was disbanded and the Minneapolis library system was merged into the Hennepin County libraries, which operates under the auspices of an advisory board appointed by the Hennepin County Board of Commissioners. Feeling just a bit nostalgic about the end of such a grand urban civic and literary institution, we thought we’d look back on some of the key points in the history of our libraries.

1859: A handful of Minneapolis businessmen create the Young Men’s Library Association of Minneapolis. This includes bookstore owner Thomas Hale Williams, who offers a room in the back of his bookstore on Nicollet Ave. near First St. for the member-owned cooperative library, which he manages, and so becomes the first Minneapolis librarian. Williams collected no salary. The collection includes 300 books.

1860: The library association changes its name to The Minneapolis Athenaeum.

1865: $10,000 in loans from 130 people finance construction of a building at 215 Hennepin Ave. Space is rented to a post office, a bank, and an “eating house.” Williams continues as librarian, now a paid position.

1877: Thomas Barlow Walker, a member of the Athenaeum board, begins a drive to make the Athenaeum affordable to more people and to extend the hours to include evenings and Sundays. He also favors adding popular authors like Twain and Dickens to the collection. This pits him against Williams, who tells the Pioneer Press that the Athenaeum “was not intended to be a loafing place for tramps to read dime novels.”

1880: The Athenaeum board, under Walker’s leadership, cuts Williams’s pay and hours. Williams resigns.

1882: St. Paul establishes a free public library; the city of Minneapolis is considering doing the same.

1884: The Minneapolis City Charter is amended to levy a half-mill tax and authorize a bond to build a free public library.

1885: The first Minneapolis Library Board of Trustees meets; board members include Thomas Lowry, M.B. Koon, John B. Atwater, Sven Oftedal, E.M. Johnson, and T.B. Walker. The mayor, the president of the University of Minnesota and the president of the school board are ex-officio members. Walker is elected president of the board. The new board signs a 99-year agreement with the Athenaeum to house its collections.

Dec. 16, 1889: The first Minneapolis Public Library opens at 10th and Hennepin. The building shares space with the Society of Fine Arts and the Academy of Natural Sciences. Walker is on the board of all three organizations.

Feb. 27, 1890: The first branch library opens in the basement of North High School, 18th and Emerson avenues north.

1891: The Minneapolis library circulates 279,193 books, making it the sixth largest in the country. The library is open seven days a week until 10 p.m.

1904: Gratia Countryman is hired as head librarian. She serves until 1936, overseeing an expansion of library services not replicated since. She is the first woman to head the Minneapolis library system and the only woman in the country to head a library system of this size.

1910: Countryman opens a reading room in Bridge Square at Second and Hennepin, near the unemployment offices and cheap hotels that house the unemployed men. “They have no homes, they have not even the privilege of a chair in many of the lodging houses; where shall they go in the daytime?” she said.

1912: Minneapolis receives a grant from the Carnegie foundation to build four branch libraries.

1915: Borrowing privileges are extended to all residents of Hennepin County. The city asks the Hennepin County Board of Commissioners to pitch in $1,000 for library administrative costs. The Society of Fine Arts moves its collection and school to the newly constructed Art Institute in South Minneapolis.

1918: Walker offers land on Lowry Hill for a joint library and art museum. Many people are suspicious of Walker’s motives; Alderman John Peterson says: “This Lowry Hill gang and other similar sinister organizations can’t control a few of us who are not weak milk sops.”

1922: Countryman forms the Hennepin County library system under the auspices of the Minneapolis library board. Hennepin County places a one-mill levy on county residents to support library service outside the city.

1923: Walker withdraws his offer and in 1927 opens an art museum on the site. Walker dies in 1928.

1960: Hennepin County population outside Minneapolis exceeds that of the city. The population shift to the suburbs reduces city tax revenues, beginning a struggle between the city and the county over library funding and service. The county system is straining under administration of the city library board, which has no suburban representatives. Proposals are made to merge the two systems, to which the city objects.

Jan. 30, 1961: After decades of lobbying by various head librarians, a new downtown library opens at Fourth and Nicollet, only a block away from the original library built by the Athenaeum in 1866.

1965: The county levy is increased to support a library building program. A separate Hennepin County Library Board is created, with six members of the Minneapolis board and six members representing the suburbs.

1967: The county library board is reduced to nine members, with three from Minneapolis. Both library boards agree that a merger of the two systems would be a good idea.

1969: MELSA, the Metropolitan Library Service Agency, is formed. Nine library systems in the metro area agree to reciprocal borrowing privileges, interlibrary loans, and sharing of reference services.

1970: Just as a merger seems imminent, the Minneaplis board backs off. Minneapolis library board members fear that a merged system, under Hennepin County control, would not serve the best interests of Minneapolis.

1971: Minneapolis library board opposes legislation initiated by Hennepin County to merge the two systems; the effort dies in committee. The initiative raises fears among the Minneapolis board members and further polarizes the two systems. Ongoing issues include how much the county should pay the city, whether county library headquarters should remain at the downtown Minneapolis library, and whether county residents should pay a fee for city library cards.

1973: The Hennepin County library board moves its headquarters from Minneapolis to the new Southdale-Hennepin library at 70th and Xerxes.

1974: Negotiations over county payments to the city are strained as the county continues to push for a merger and the city wants more money from the county. Finally, the city agrees to quit asking for money in exchange for the county dropping its efforts to merge the two systems.

Nov. 7, 2000: Minneapolis voters approve a $140 million referendum for a new Central Library and improvements to all 14 community libraries.

2004: Budget shortfalls force the Minneapolis Library system to lay off 30 percent of its staff, cut hours by 35 percent, and reduce spending on collections, programs, technology and maintenance.

May 20, 2006: New Minneapolis Central Library opens to great fanfare. Rake magazine (which published its last issue this March) publishes a special 68-page literary supplement to commemorate the opening.

Oct. 25, 2006: The Minneapolis Library Board votes to close three neighborhood libraries — Roosevelt, Webber Park, and Southeast — and to close Central Library on Mondays.

Jan. 9, 2007: No libraries, including Central, will be open on Sundays or Mondays.

Feb. 1, 2007: The Star Tribune quotes Hennepin County officials as saying a merger between the Hennepin County and Minneapolis library systems is likely.

May 19, 2007: The Minnesota legislature approves plans to merge Hennepin County and Minneapolis libraries as early as Jan. 1, 2008, and no later than Dec. 31, 2008. The merged system, to be called Hennepin County Library, will include 15 Minneapolis and 26 suburban libraries. Legislative approval is needed because a merger requires changing the Minneapolis City Charter.

Dec. 19, 2007: Final meeting of the elected members of the Minneapolis Library Board of Trustees addresses a number of usual items, then the minutes include this near the bottom: “Recognition of Minneapolis Public Library Board Trustees — Anita S. Duckor, Alan Hooker, Rod Krueger, Sheldon Mains, Hussein Samatar, Laurie Savran, Gary Thaden and Laura Waterman Wittstock”; the minutes do not elaborate.

Jan. 1, 2008: The Hennepin County Library Board is expanded from seven to 11 members, with three of the initial appointees to be residents of the city of Minneapolis, made in consultation with the mayor and City Council. It is not clear whether the three seats set aside for Minneapolis residents will continue to be so indicated after the initial appointees’ terms have expired.

Jan. 29, 2008: The Hennepin County Board of Commissioners appoints four new members to the Hennepin County Library Board — three Minneapolis residents and one at-large member. The new members are: Roger Hale, Kathleen Lamb and John Pacheco Jr., from Minneapolis and Jill Joseph from Eden Prairie. Hale is a retired corporate executive, Kathleen Lamb is an attorney with a Minneapolis firm, John Pacheco is an executive with Xcel Energy.

June 1, 2008: Thirteen Hennepin County libraries begin Sunday hours, including four in Minneapolis: Central, East Lake, Hosmer and North Regional.

June 25, 2008: The Star Tribune reports that the merger is costing $3.5 million more than projected, causing “some spluttering County Board members to cast blame and doubt on county and city staffers who made the deal,” writes Steve Brandt.

—Information for this timeline came from The Library Book: Centennial History of the Minneapolis Public Library, by Bruce Weir Benidt (Minneapolis Public Library and Information Center, 1984), the Hennepin County and Minneapolis Library Web sites, and recent newspaper accounts.