Conway County Library

Libraries are important foundations of a healthy community. Libraries help people with things such as seeking opportunities for employment, discovering medical research, understanding new ideas or being consumed by unique stories, while, simultaneously, providing a sense of place for gathering. The Conway County Library is a unique and valuable resource that is often the only readily available source of comprehensive information needed by people of Morrilton, Arkansas for personal, family, and job-related purposes. The community's economy benefits when people use library resources to make wise business decisions, employees use it to improve job skills, or the disadvantaged use it to help break the cycle of poverty. During economic hardship, a lot of citizens in Morrilton turn to and depend on the library.

The Conway County Library is one of the four United States Carnegie libraries in Arkansas. “Andrew Carnegie, and later the Carnegie Corporation, provided $41,740,689 for 1,679 public library buildings in 1,412 U.S. communities” (Bobinski, p. 1). Between 1906-1915 the Carnegie Corporation of New York awarded four grants, totaling $138,000, to build libraries in Eureka Springs, Fort Smith, Little Rock, and Morrilton. Fort Smith’s library, after opening on January 30, 1908, was a library until approximately 1970. Currently, it is home to KFSM-TV, whose production studio is an addition to the original building. Fort Smith was awarded $25,000 of the $138,000 and Little Rock $88,100. Eureka springs was awarded second to the least amount of $15,500 on 23 April 1906 and the building was completed in 1912, and originally open only three afternoons a week as the library depended on memberships and contributions for income. By 1920 the Library was open six days a week, and a year later the building was supplied with electrical lighting. Morrilton was awarded the least amount of $10,000.

The Pathfinder Club was a ladies’ club fashioned in Morrilton, Arkansas in 1897. The club’s first objective after being formed was to establish a public library for the citizens of Morrilton. A rare book collection of 1800 books were donated by a member of the community named Mr. W. S. Cazort, which became known as the Porter Collection. The Pathfinder Club bought the Old School Presbyterian Church to establish the first library in Morrilton, with the financial and physical assistance from its citizens. By 1915, the club sold the Old School Presbyterian Church and used the proceeds to buy an open plot of land in downtown Morrilton. The newly bought land and the 1800 book collection allowed the Pathfinder Club to qualify for the Andrew Carnegie Foundation grant, in which Morrilton was granted ten thousand dollars on the 29th of September 1915 to construct a new library. In Theodore Jones’ Carnegie Libraries Across America: A Public Legacy, “Jones gives proper credit to the women’s reading clubs and ladies’ library association that were so frequently responsible for securing the Carnegie grant” (Watson, p. 1).

The Conway County Library opened its doors on October 1916 and this library continues to serve the community as the Conway County Library. Out of the $10,000 awarded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the current 3,628 square foot facility was constructed using $7,500, with the rest of the contribution used to purchase furniture and coal. When the facility opened in October 1916 it consisted of two levels or floors. The bottom floor provided a meeting room with a small kitchen, a coal bin, and a furnace. The upper floor was the only area of the structure that held books. Decades later, citizens of Morrilton, Arkansas and Conway County showed their support of the library by making donations for a more modernized and people friendly library. Completed in 2000, the Library received an extra 1300 square feet of space, handicapped accessible restroom and books added to the lower floor, By the year 2007 it offered computer services with an automated catalogue of approximately 35,000 online items.

Bobinski, George S.. A Call for Preservation of a Carnegie Library, JSTOR. June 1989. Accessed November 24th 2020. . http://www.jstor.org/stable/25542173.

Conway County Library . History of the Conway County Library, Conway County Library . 2007. Accessed November 24th 2020. https://www.conwaycountylibrary.org/history/.

Watson, Paula D., The Library Quarterly: Information, Community, Policy, JSTOR. October 1st 1998. Accessed November 24th 2020. https://www.jstor.org/stable/4309252?seq=1.