Who We Are

About Us 

The Willamina Public Library is part of the Chemeketa cooperative regional Library Service.  CCRLS is a three county network of 18 lending libraries serving Polk, Yamhill and Marion Counties.

Our friendly and professional staff is eager to serve you. Welcome to the Public Library!

History

At the beginning of the 1930's a group of local women truned a shelf of books in a corner of O.C. Yoakam's feed store into a lending library and volunteered their time to staff it.  Another building owned by Mr. Yoakam soon became home to the library, where donated books helped build the collection.

The group established a local library board in October 1931 and formed the Civic club a year later.  Club members served on the board and continued to staff the library into the 1970's.

By the late 1940's members were paid $1 per day for keeping the library open on Saturdays.  Thirty years later that special Saturday compensation had increased to $5.

The city allocated $500 a year for library operations at the time, which supporters augmented with local fundraising activities.  Always seeking to encourage increased patronage, the board didn't inpose a membership fee until 1957, when they began charging $1 per year per family.  Lifetime memberships went for $10.

Today, residents of cities that have libraries receive library services without charge.  Those who live outside the city limits are charged an anual fee.

Mission Statement

A. To promote enlightened citizenship and enriched personal lives through guidance and stimulation in the communication of ideas.  To do this requires assembling, preserving and administering an organized collection of education and recreational library materials.

B. To serve the community as a center of reliable information.

C. To provide a place where inquiring minds may encounter the original, sometines unorthodox and critical ideas so necessary as correctives and stimulants in a society that depends for its survival on free competition in ideas.

D. To provide opportunity and encouragement for children, young people, men and women to educate themselves continuously.

E. To seek continually to identify community needs, to provideprograms of service to meet such needs, and to cooperate with other organizations, agencies and institutions which can provide programs or services to meet community needs.

F. To provide opportunity for recreation through the use of literature and through computer skills.