| For more than one hundred years Idaho's librarians and library supporters have worked steadily toward an overarching goal of universal library service within the state. Since the early 1900s, forward thinking members of Idaho's library community have envisioned a statewide system for providing high quality services through a "network" of mutually supportive agencies---a variety of types and sizes of libraries---all sharing knowledge and resources freely amongst themselves, for the betterment of all Idahoans.{09}To a large degree that goal has been achieved. Fully 86% of Idaho's population lives within the legal service boundaries of an established public library jurisdiction. Through more than a century of effort, Idahoans have developed some of the finest public libraries in the nation. However, there is still that 14% of the population that lives in "unserved" areas of the state; and of those served not all enjoy a particularly high level of service. Long-standing barriers to excellence of service still hinder progress.; For many observers, State statutes governing Idaho public libraries have been identified both as barriers to library growth in themselves, and also as the means by which those barriers might be reduced or removed altogether. For this study, the "law" serves as an historical "thread of Ariadne." The growth and development of Idaho public libraries is outlined by following the thread of the law. Efforts to improve the fortunes of libraries in the state through legislative reform, efforts of perhaps five generations of librarians, trustees, and their friends, are traced as a means of defining the steps by which the Idaho library laws, as contained in Idaho Code Title 33, Chapters 25 through 27, came to be in their present form. In tracing the law, the primary focus is on the effort to extend library services into the rural areas of the state, particularly through the establishment and expansion of district libraries after 1955. The study was undertaken to establish a framework for more thorough research in the history of Idaho libraries, and also is intended as a contribution to the current literature of public library development. |
