The Champaign Public Library is a library system in

Champaign Champaign ( ) is a city in Champaign County, Illinois, United States. The population was 88,302 at the 2020 census. It is the tenth-most populous municipality in Illinois and the fourth most populous city in Illinois outside the Chicago metropo ...

, Illinois. It has two branches: the main library in downtown Champaign and its Douglass branch. With its new location opening on January 6, 2008, the Champaign Public Library almost tripled its square-footage and opened with a collection of almost 285,000 volumes.

History

The Champaign Public Library traces its roots as a private, member-sustained group of readers in 1868. The small group of about forty members all paid dues to sustain their private collection of more than 300

volumes Volume is a measure of occupied three-dimensional space. It is often quantified numerically using SI derived units (such as the cubic metre and litre) or by various imperial or US customary units (such as the gallon, quart, cubic inch). The defi ...

in a cozy reading room in downtown

on Main Street. Ten years later in 1876, the group voted to dissolve itself in favor of enabling public access to their collection. The public library was officially created by the City Council on July 21, 1876 and budgeted $1,000 for the library. When the library opened it had almost 750 volumes in its collection. In 1894, Champaign banker and philanthropist A.C. Burnham announced a substantial gift of $50,000 for a new library as a memorial to his wife, Julia Finley Burnham, a former member of the library board. Of the total, $40,000 was for the site and building and $10,000 was for a book endowment. The Burnham Athenaeum at 306 W. Church Street opened on December 17, 1896, with two librarians and 5,593 books. When it closed, the same building was bursting at the seams with forty employees and over 100,000 items. An approximately 40,000-square-foot Main Library at 505 S. Randolph Street was dedicated in November 1977. Designed by Hammond Beeby and Associates of Chicago, the building was funded largely by a $2.3 million referendum. In 2008, the library expanded to a new location and replaced the 40-year-old building that the community had outgrown. The new building, designed by Ross Barney Architects of

Chicago, Illinois (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...

contains 121,000 square feet of new and improved space.

Main Library

Construction for the new library building began in 2005 and it opened for public use in 2008.

Library awards

In 2013 the library received the following awards from the Library Leadership and Management Association (a division of the

American Library Association The American Library Association (ALA) is a nonprofit organization based in the United States that promotes libraries and library education internationally. It is the oldest and largest library association in the world, with 49,727 members ...

): * Best of Show, Annual Reports * Best of Show, Special Programs & Events * Best of Show, Webpage/Homepage * Honorable Mention, Adult & Family Reading Club Materials / One Book Materials * Honorable Mention, Fundraising Materials In 2014, the library was awarded a John Cotton Dana Library Public Relations Award for the "Show Some Library Love" fundraising campaign. The national honor includes a prize of $10,000.

Design awards

Below are awards the library has received based upon its design and state-of-the-art engineering. *AIA Central Illinois Architecture Design Honor Award, awarded to Ross Barney Architects (2008) * American Council of Engineering Companies of Illinois (ACEC-IL) Special Achievement Award, and American Institute of Architects (AIA) Central Illinois Honor Award for Architecture, for engineering design of the library, awarded to Henneman Engineering (2009) *

American Institute of Architects The American Institute of Architects (AIA) is a professional organization for architects in the United States. Headquartered in Washington, D.C., the AIA offers education, government advocacy, community redevelopment, and public outreach to su ...

, Chicago Chapter, Design Excellence Awards, Honor Award (highest distinction) for Interior Architecture, awarded to Ross Barney Architects (2009) *Brick Industry Association Brick in Architecture Awards, Silver Award (2009) *

, Illinois State Component, Frank Lloyd Wright Honor Award. This award recognizes an individual building that enhances the natural and built environment of a community.

Douglass Branch Library

Originally organized as a joint project between Champaign and neighboring Urbana in 1970, the Douglass branch was located within a single room at the Douglass Community Center on North Sixth Street in Champaign. By 1972, the branch was absorbed by the Champaign Public Library and was relocated to a small building on Bradley Avenue until June 1997 where the branch currently operates on East Grove Street in Champaign by neighboring Douglass Park. Both the library and the park are named after

abolitionist Abolitionism, or the abolitionist movement, is the movement to end slavery. In Western Europe and the Americas, abolitionism was a historic movement that sought to end the Atlantic slave trade and liberate the enslaved people. The British ...

and

journalist A journalist is an individual that collects/gathers information in form of text, audio, or pictures, processes them into a news-worthy form, and disseminates it to the public. The act or process mainly done by the journalist is called journalis ...

Fredrick Douglass. After escaping

slavery Slavery and enslavement are both the state and the condition of being a slave—someone forbidden to quit one's service for an enslaver, and who is treated by the enslaver as property. Slavery typically involves slaves being made to perf ...

Maryland Maryland ( ) is a state in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. It shares borders with Virginia, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia to its south and west; Pennsylvania to its north; and Delaware and the Atlantic Ocean to ...

, Douglass became a noted advocate for

equality Equality may refer to: Society * Political equality, in which all members of a society are of equal standing ** Consociationalism, in which an ethnically, religiously, or linguistically divided state functions by cooperation of each group's elit ...

among all people and lectured in Champaign at least once while traveling north.

References

{{authority control Buildings and structures in Champaign, Illinois Public libraries in Illinois Education in Champaign County, Illinois Tourist attractions in Champaign County, Illinois