The Smyrna Public Library is an independent municipal

library A library is a collection of materials, books or media that are accessible for use and not just for display purposes. A library provides physical (hard copies) or digital access (soft copies) materials, and may be a physical location or a vir ...

in the U.S. state of

Georgia Georgia most commonly refers to: * Georgia (country), a country in the Caucasus region of Eurasia * Georgia (U.S. state), a state in the Southeast United States Georgia may also refer to: Places Historical states and entities * Related to the ...

. It is located at 100 Village Green Circle in

downtown ''Downtown'' is a term primarily used in North America by English speakers to refer to a city's sometimes commercial, cultural and often the historical, political and geographic heart. It is often synonymous with its central business distric ...

Smyrna Smyrna ( ; grc, Σμύρνη, Smýrnē, or , ) was a Greek city located at a strategic point on the Aegean coast of Anatolia. Due to its advantageous port conditions, its ease of defence, and its good inland connections, Smyrna rose to promi ...

. It is the only

public library A public library is a library that is accessible by the general public and is usually funded from public sources, such as taxes. It is operated by librarians and library paraprofessionals, who are also Civil service, civil servants. There are ...

in the county which is not a part of the

Cobb County Public Library System The Cobb County Public Library System (CCPLS) is a library system, system of 16 public library, public libraries in Cobb County, Georgia, Cobb County, Georgia (U.S. state), Georgia, United States, excluding its second-largest city of Smyrna, Georg ...

. An educational and cultural resource for the residents, the library offers a wide variety of services to the community. The library collection has grown to over 130,000 items in a wide variety of formats. Books,

audiobook An audiobook (or a talking book) is a recording of a book or other work being read out loud. A reading of the complete text is described as "unabridged", while readings of shorter versions are abridgements. Spoken audio has been available in sc ...

DVD The DVD (common abbreviation for Digital Video Disc or Digital Versatile Disc) is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 1995 and first released on November 1, 1996, in Japan. The medium can store any kin ...

videotape Videotape is magnetic tape used for storing video and usually sound in addition. Information stored can be in the form of either an analog or digital signal. Videotape is used in both video tape recorders (VTRs) and, more commonly, videocassett ...

music Music is generally defined as the art of arranging sound to create some combination of form, harmony, melody, rhythm or otherwise expressive content. Exact definitions of music vary considerably around the world, though it is an aspect ...

CDs, and government documents can all be checked out by cardholders. There is free

Internet The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, pub ...

access, and the library is a

Wi-Fi Wi-Fi () is a family of wireless network protocols, based on the IEEE 802.11 family of standards, which are commonly used for local area networking of devices and Internet access, allowing nearby digital devices to exchange data by radio wave ...

hotspot. The library's reference collection includes over 8,000 volumes with special collections on military and genealogy. Access is also provided to over 200 computer

database In computing, a database is an organized collection of data stored and accessed electronically. Small databases can be stored on a file system, while large databases are hosted on computer clusters or cloud storage. The design of databases sp ...

s through online subscriptions or on

CD-ROM A CD-ROM (, compact disc read-only memory) is a type of read-only memory consisting of a pre-pressed optical compact disc that contains data. Computers can read—but not write or erase—CD-ROMs. Some CDs, called enhanced CDs, hold both comput ...

. The children's department presents more than 40 programs a month and was the recipient of the 2005

Georgia Library Association The Georgia Library Association (GLA) is a professional organization in the United States for Georgia's librarians and library workers. It is headquartered in Savannah, Georgia. It was founded as The Georgia Library Club by members of the Young Me ...

Eason Associates Program Award. The Friends of the Smyrna Library is one of the largest "Library Friends" groups in Georgia. They raise money for library activities and sponsor monthly adult speaker programs, a book discussion group, art exhibits, an annual

dinner theatre Dinner theater (sometimes called dinner and a show) is a form of entertainment that combines a restaurant meal with a staged play or musical. "Dinner and a show" can also refer to a restaurant meal in combination with live concert music, where pat ...

, and the Murder Goes South Mystery Festival.

History

The Smyrna Women's Club and the Smyrna Men's Club provided the original financing and co-sponsored the first library, which officially opened on September 15, 1936 with little more than 600 books. Most were collected by young boys pulling their

wagon A wagon or waggon is a heavy four-wheeled vehicle pulled by draught animals or on occasion by humans, used for transporting goods, commodities, agricultural materials, supplies and sometimes people. Wagons are immediately distinguished from ...

s from door to door asking for books. Some of these books remain part of the library collection and are on display. A single bookshelf in the Woman's Club located at the corner of

Atlanta Atlanta ( ) is the capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Georgia. It is the seat of Fulton County, the most populous county in Georgia, but its territory falls in both Fulton and DeKalb counties. With a population of 498,715 ...

Road (old U.S. 41 and State Route 3) and

Powder Springs Powder Springs is a city in Cobb County, Georgia, United States. The population was 13,940 at the 2010 census, with an estimated population for 2019 of 15,758. In 2015, the city elected its first black mayor, Al Thurman. He was the first African- ...

Street (old State Route 5) was the home of Smyrna's first library collection. By 1938, 1,400 volumes were housed in their

club Club may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media * ''Club'' (magazine) * Club, a ''Yie Ar Kung-Fu'' character * Clubs (suit), a suit of playing cards * Club music * "Club", by Kelsea Ballerini from the album ''kelsea'' Brands and enterprises ...

house, and in 1939 the Men's Club added a room to the Women's Clubhouse to accommodate the growing collection. This "new" library was located in the back of the Women's Clubhouse. A part-time

librarian A librarian is a person who works professionally in a library providing access to information, and sometimes social or technical programming, or instruction on information literacy to users. The role of the librarian has changed much over time, ...

administered the collection, and ongoing funding was a

joint venture A joint venture (JV) is a business entity created by two or more parties, generally characterized by shared ownership, shared returns and risks, and shared governance. Companies typically pursue joint ventures for one of four reasons: to acces ...

of local citizens' support, the city of Smyrna, and the

U.S. federal government The federal government of the United States (U.S. federal government or U.S. government) is the Federation#Federal governments, national government of the United States, a federal republic located primarily in North America, composed of 50 ...

. The

city council A municipal council is the legislative body of a municipality or local government area. Depending on the location and classification of the municipality it may be known as a city council, town council, town board, community council, rural counc ...

secured

Works Projects Administration The Works Progress Administration (WPA; renamed in 1939 as the Work Projects Administration) was an American New Deal agency that employed millions of jobseekers (mostly men who were not formally educated) to carry out public works projects, i ...

funds to help finance the project. The monthly income was 30 dollars: 20 from the WPA and five from each of the clubs. This contract was renewed each year until the WPA was abolished in the 1940s. At that time the city of Smyrna, with help from the state and county boards of education, continued to finance the library. The library was governed by a seven-member

board of directors A board of directors (commonly referred simply as the board) is an executive committee that jointly supervises the activities of an organization, which can be either a for-profit or a nonprofit organization such as a business, nonprofit organiz ...

, and it continued to grow and have a prominent role in the community. In 1961 the city assumed full responsibility for funding the library and built a new library facility on King Street. By 1986, the library was seriously overcrowded, and the

mayor In many countries, a mayor is the highest-ranking official in a municipal government such as that of a city or a town. Worldwide, there is a wide variance in local laws and customs regarding the powers and responsibilities of a mayor as well a ...

and the

recognized the need for a new facility. A new library was recognized as an integral part of the first phase of the city's downtown revitalization program. In 1991, the city opened a new facility. This nationally recognized building is based on the

colonial Colonial or The Colonial may refer to: * Colonial, of, relating to, or characteristic of a colony or colony (biology) Architecture * American colonial architecture * French Colonial * Spanish Colonial architecture Automobiles * Colonial (1920 au ...

Virginia Virginia, officially the Commonwealth of Virginia, is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Southeastern regions of the United States, between the Atlantic Coast and the Appalachian Mountains. The geography and climate of the Commonwealth ar ...

capitol A capitol, named after the Capitoline Hill in Rome, is usually a legislative building where a legislature meets and makes laws for its respective political entity. Specific capitols include: * United States Capitol in Washington, D.C. * Numerous ...

in Williamsburg. It features an open

floor plan In architecture and building engineering, a floor plan is a technical drawing to scale, showing a view from above, of the relationships between rooms, spaces, traffic patterns, and other physical features at one level of a structure. Dimensio ...

with large windows that provides a warm, inviting atmosphere to 250,000 annual visitors.

References

External links

Smyrna Library official website
{{Coord, 33.8855, -84.51725, display=title Buildings and structures in Cobb County, Georgia Public libraries in Georgia (U.S. state) Education in Cobb County, Georgia