The Flint Public Library is the public library serving Flint, Michigan. It was founded in 1851, and its current building on the

Flint Cultural Center The Flint Cultural Center (FCC) is a campus of cultural, scientific, and artistic institutes located in Flint, Michigan, United States. The institutions located on the grounds of the FCC are the Flint Institute of Arts, Flint Institute of Music, ...

campus was built in 1958. It has hosted the Michigan Storytellers Festival since 1981 and the Julia A. Moore Poetry Contest (to celebrate bad poetry) since 1994. During the Flint water crisis, the library played a key role supporting the community, and in the aftermath it partnered with StoryCorps to create oral history interviews of residents' experiences. The Flint Public Library's collections document the City of Flint and Genesee County, local

African-American history African-American history began with the arrival of Africans to North America in the 16th and 17th centuries. Former Spanish slaves who had been freed by Francis Drake arrived aboard the Golden Hind at New Albion in California in 1579. The ...

and

literature Literature is any collection of written work, but it is also used more narrowly for writings specifically considered to be an art form, especially prose fiction, drama, and poetry. In recent centuries, the definition has expanded to include ...

, and

genealogy Genealogy () is the study of families, family history, and the tracing of their lineages. Genealogists use oral interviews, historical records, genetic analysis, and other records to obtain information about a family and to demonstrate kin ...

. It also offers a Michigan Collection and an Automotive History Collection. The library has furthermore been designated a

Federal Depository Library The Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP) is a government program created to make U.S. federal government publications available to the public at no cost. As of April 2021, there are 1,114 depository libraries in the United States and its ter ...

for government publications, maintains

microfilm Microforms are scaled-down reproductions of documents, typically either photographic film, films or paper, made for the purposes of transmission, storage, reading, and printing. Microform images are commonly reduced to about 4% or of the origin ...

copies of ''

The Flint Journal ''The Flint Journal'' is a quad-weekly newspaper based in Flint, Michigan, owned by Booth Newspapers, a subsidiary of Advance Publications. Published Tuesdays, Thursdays, Fridays and Sundays, it serves Genesee, Lapeer and Shiawassee Countie ...

'', and provides collections for both children and teenagers.

History

The Flint Public Library was founded in 1851 by a group of women who were active in the local community. Initially a Flint Board of Education department, it evolved into a district library serving residents of Flint and its surrounding communities. In 1905, the library created a children's collection. In 1965, it participated in a trial (along with the

Grand Rapids Public Library The Grand Rapids Public Library located in downtown Grand Rapids, Michigan and also includes seven branch libraries throughout the city. The library system has 170 full and part-time employees and has a service area of roughly 197,000 people. Hi ...

) of an

electronic article surveillance Electronic article surveillance is a technological method for preventing shoplifting from retail stores, pilferage of books from libraries or removal of properties from office buildings. Special tags are fixed to merchandise; these tags are remove ...

system that was developed by 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 ...

, which reduced the losses due to thefts in the library from $15,000 to approximately $1,500. In 1981, the Flint Public Library began holding the Michigan Storytellers Festival, which has been hosted both on site and at

Crossroads Village In Colonial American history, a crossroads village is a settlement that was situated where two or more roads would intersect. The owners of farmland along a frequently traveled trail, path, or road, often paralleling a water route, would plan a ...

in Genesee County. It has been attended by nationally prominent storytellers, including the

Georgia Sea Island Singers The Georgia Sea Island Singers are an American folk music ensemble from Georgia, United States. Formed in the early 1900s,

Bil Lepp Bil Lepp is an American storyteller and a five-time winner of the West Virginia State Liars' Contest. He performs at storytelling festivals around the nation and is a regular performer at the National Storytelling Festival in Jonesborough, Tenness ...

, and

Johnny Moses Johnny Moses is a Tulalip Native American master storyteller, oral historian, healer and spiritual leader. Background Moses was raised on Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada in the village of Ohiat. He learned tribal traditions from his gr ...

. In 1994, the library created the Julia A. Moore Poetry Contest to celebrate bad poetry, inspired by Julia A. Moore; she was known as "The Sweet Singer of Michigan" and considered "history's worst best-selling poet" by some poetry critics, according to William F. Ast III of ''

The Herald-Palladium ''The Herald-Palladium'' is a newspaper distributed in the Southwest Michigan region serving all or part of Berrien, Cass, Van Buren, and Allegan Counties. History The ''Herald-Palladium'' is a merger of many former local newspapers in the t ...

''. In 2015, the Flint Public Library partnered with the A Kut Above barbershop to create the Read-While-You-Wait Library, a collection of books for boys ages 4–10 to read while waiting for haircuts. In the aftermath of the Flint water crisis, the library partnered with StoryCorps to create oral history interviews of residents' experiences, starting in 2016; this built off a previous, pre-water crisis partnership and resulted in interview recordings being deposited at the

Library of Congress The Library of Congress (LOC) is the research library that officially serves the United States Congress and is the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It is the oldest federal cultural institution in the country. The library ...

. Additionally, Julie Hordyk argued that the library played a key role supporting the community in three ways during the water crisis: firstly, its staff engaged directly in determining what course of action to take and how to handle resources; secondly, it served as a trusted and accessible gateway to critical information for community members; and thirdly, it linked donors from outside the city with the community's local response system. In February 2020, the library closed to allow for major renovations, and in July 2020 it opened a temporary location at

Courtland Center Courtland Center, formerly Eastland Mall, is an enclosed shopping mall in Burton, Michigan, a suburb of Flint, Michigan, United States. It opened in 1968, two years before the larger Genesee Valley Center on the other side of the Flint metropolit ...

in Burton.

Collections

The Flint Public Library preserves and provides access to collections documenting the City of Flint and Genesee County, including local

and

. Its Michigan Collection is one of the largest of its kind in the state, and it also has an Automotive History Collection. The library boasts Michigan's second-largest open-stack

genealogical Genealogy () is the study of families, family history, and the tracing of their lineages. Genealogists use oral interviews, historical records, genetic analysis, and other records to obtain information about a family and to demonstrate kin ...

collection, which benefits from donations of family history-related materials from the Flint Genealogical Society, an organization that also maintains volunteers at the library to provide free assistance to those conducting genealogical research. Furthermore, the library has been designated a

for government publications. In addition to a Children's Section that includes 50,000 volumes of both fiction and nonfiction, the Flint Public Library offers a Young Adult section known as "The Teen Zone" that provides information resources as well as literature for teenagers. Additionally, the library maintains

copies of ''

''. It is also home to a branch of the Michigan Legal Help Self-Help Center Network of Genesee County, which provides on-site "navigators" to answer questions from the public (although they do not give legal advice) in addition to resources available online through the library's computers.

Building

The Flint Public Library's Main Library is located on the western end of the

campus. The building was designed by Sulho Alexander Nurmi, Louis C. Kingscott & Associates and built in 1958. The library board partnered with OPN Architects to create a proposed $24-million renovation to the building, with the primary goals of maximizing the amount of the building's of space that is used publicly, keeping parts of the library open after regular hours, expanding the children's and teen areas, and creating a quiet zone. During the summer months, the library hosts

arts The arts are a very wide range of human practices of creative expression, storytelling and cultural participation. They encompass multiple diverse and plural modes of thinking, doing and being, in an extremely broad range of media. Both ...

, blues, and storytelling festivals outdoors on its lawns.

References

External links

* * {{authority control Public libraries in Michigan Buildings and structures in Flint, Michigan Tourist attractions in Flint, Michigan 1851 establishments in Michigan Library buildings completed in 1958