The Washington State Library is a government agency that operates public libraries in Washington state's prisons and mental hospitals, and maintains collections related to the state government. Based in Tumwater, it is a service of the Washington Secretary of State and was founded in 1853 as the Washington Territorial Library. The library has a collection of 2.25 million physical items and other online resources available to residents of the state.
History
The Washington Territorial Library was established on March 2, 1853, with the signing of the Organic Act by President Millard Fillmore to create Washington Territory. The law included an appropriation of $5,000 for the territory library that was used by appointed Territorial Governor Issac Stevens to buy and ship 2,130 volumes from New York City to Olympia. The first shipment of books departed from New York City on May 21, 1853, aboard the Invincible, which traveled around Cape Horn and South America to San Francisco. The books were transferred to the Tarquinia and arrived in Olympia on October 23, 1853, a few weeks before Governor Stevens arrived from his overland trip and took office. The library was opened to public use beginning in 1855, after an amendment to the territorial library law was passed by the territorial legislature. Prior to achieving statehood on November 11, 1889, the Territorial Library reported a collection of 10,448 volumes. The new state legislature passed a bill creating the state library on March 27, 1890. The state library's collection was organized under the Dewey Decimal Classification system in 1898, and a card index was created in 1901. The library occupied the Joel M. Pritchard Building on the State Capitol campus in Olympia from 1958 until it was damaged by the 2001 Nisqually earthquake and evacuated. At its greatest extent in the 1990s, the library contained 547,000 books, periodicals, and documents. The library was moved to a temporary location in Tumwater in December 2001, while the Pritchard Building underwent already-planned renovations and served as the temporary chambers for the state senate. The general collection was downsized by 260,000 books, which were donated to local libraries. The state government proposed closing the state library as part of its 2002 budget, saving $9 million in annual expenses, but the library was saved by eliminating the state library commission and merging operations with the Office of the Secretary of State effective July 1, 2002. The state government attempted to eliminate the state library a second time in December 2002, with collections transferred to local universities and colleges, but was saved by downsizing its staff and reorganizing under the Office of the Secretary of State. The library has since expanded its digital collections, which include scanned copies of older state newspapers and books. In 2019, the state legislature approved a $2 fee on recorded documents to fund the construction of a new library and archives building in Tumwater. The $108 million project would construct a joint facility on the South Campus near the former state library. The Washington State Archives are currently housed in a building on the capitol campus that was constructed in 1962 and deemed too small to hold the state's records.
Branches and services
The State Library maintains branches at several state agencies, as well as in correctional facilities and mental hospitals:
