Our History

The Valley City Barnes County Public Library is only one of three remaining original Carnegie Libraries in the state of North Dakota still functioning as a library. The Tuesday Club applied for and received a $14,000 grant from Andrew Carnegie with the building being dedicated in 1903. An addition was added in 1997 doubling the square footage and bringing the building into ADA compliance.

Maintaining a historic building requires constant work. In the past few years we have had the brick and stone work tuckpointed and repaired, the original wood entry door on the west side was rebuilt by a local craftsman, the exterior of the building was repainted to replicate the original color scheme, the interior has been repainted, and new carpet and flooring have been installed. In the past year we installed a new circulation and staff work desk in the children's library. The HVAC was updated in the past couple years and we just installed an ionizer and UV sanitizer to work in combination with the in-line filters to reduce particulate matter and airborne pathogens. This was done partially in response to Covid but will have benefits during cold and flu season as well. We just finishing setting up our new makerspace which includes a video editing station and green screen setup.

We presently have a staff of eight part-timers, a full time library director, and full time assistant director; all of whom are dedicated to providing the best public library service we can for our community.

For more about Carnegie libraries see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnegie_library