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        History of the St. Ignace Public Library

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The St. Ignace Public Library began as the Civic League Library in 1924. It started with about 100 books donated by Civic League members, and was housed in the old city hall. Then for a time, the Civic League Library was housed with the LaSalle High School Library.

When the current Municipal Building was dedicated in 1940, the Civic League Library found a new home for its 1,000 volumes. In 1944, the Civic League stated the Library was their most important project, and formed a Library Board comprised of six Civic League members.

By 1954, the Civic League Library had 4,000 volumes and an annual circulation of 10,000.

In 1969, when the Civic League disbanded, the library was turned over to the City of St. Ignace . It is now operated with a five member library board.

In 1983 the library moved its 10,000 volume collection from City Hall to Spring Street. The library's annual circulation in 1983 was nearly 12,000.

In 1993, the library received its first computer. In 1994, the library began providing Internet access to the public.

In 1995, the library was renovated, maximizing it’s space to capacity for it’s expanding collection and public use computers.

In the year 2000, the St. Ignace Public Library had an annual circulation of almost 28,000.

In April, 2005 the St. Ignace Public Library moved into its brand new $1.3 million library located at 110 W. Spruce St .  The new facility was funded solely by grants and donations. The new library at 7,000 square feet more than doubled its capacity from the old facility. The new library has a community room for library programs and community use. At present, there are eight high-speed public use computers with plenty of room for expansion. The new library also has high-speed connection capability for laptop computer users. The new facility contains over 23,000 circulating materials, including books-on-CD, books-on-tape, CD-ROM’s, large print books, CD’s, magazines, videos and DVD’s.