The Emporia Public Library was founded in 1869, only twelve years after the town was settled. The library was based on a subscription with the annual dues priced at $3 a year. The library rented rooms over a drugstore for $15 a month. The librarian was paid $100 every six months, a great wage for a woman worker in the west. The popularity of the site, grew. The original collection of books began with 764 volumes and six monthly magazine subscriptions. One of the libraries subscriptions were to Lippincott’s Phrenological Journal. Phrenology was popular in the mid -nineteenth century, its emphasis being on how to read a persons health and mind by the number of bumps on their head. The library was in debt after a decade, and the committee decided to try its hand at fund-raising. A Strawberry Festival was given, with the proceeds raising enough money to purchase 49 books. Then in 1875, the library held a masquerade, and raised $96. The library continued to have a large amount of debt which came to $203 in 1882. Therefore, in 1884 the city of Emporia passed into law that the library should be supported by the taxation of the community to provide enough money for the budget. Thus, the library became a public free library at that time.
In 1901, the librarian Mrs. Amanda Wicks learned about Carnegie funds available to libraries across the nation. She immediately applied for a grant, but was disappointed when she learned that there was a Carnegie Library at the College of Emporia. The request for funding was thus discredited. However, Wicks attempted a second time and was able to procure $22,000. This was more than enough for a new building. The land was donated for the building set and the construction began. In 1906, the library opened its doors with a grand reception from the community. The library had quite strict regulations on the personal qualifications of a librarian. However in 1920, Miss Marjorie Kern a friend of Mrs. Nora Daniels, stated her friend’s qualifications. “I asked Nora how she got started working for the library one day and she said that a Mrs. Walden was on the library board asked her one Sunday after church if she would like to work at the library. Mrs. Walden said to her: I’ve noticed you always come to Sunday School and church and you never whisper. This was in 1907. Nora said with her dry sense of humor always chuckled and said that those were strange qualifications for a job a job that was to last her 50 years.”
Mrs. Daniels was the librarian through the Depression and the war years. Her funding was extremely scarce and visitors remember her constantly mending books so that they could return to circulation. The library was reconstructed in 1975. During construction, the construction crew found 18 inches of manure, where their used to be a livery. There was an old well, with 20 jugs which used to have whiskey in it. The library and even the history of its construction has deep-rooted ties to the old west and to the colonial philosophy of free libraries.