Library Celebrates 75 Years of Hungry Readers

Dunbar Library Branch head Samantha Mills looks forward to welcoming residents to the branch’s 75th anniversary celebration this Friday, Nov. 28, from 3 to 5 p.m.

By Carol Volkart

When the Dunbar branch of the Vancouver Public Library first opened its doors on Nov. 28, 1950, a crowd of 600 people jammed into a space smaller than the current version.

It’s an indication, says branch head Samantha Mills, of Dunbar residents’ enduring enthusiasm for their library. They were “voracious and literate” then, she says, and they’re voracious and literate now.

On Friday, the branch at 4515 Dunbar Street is throwing a party to celebrate its 75 years of feeding the community’s appetite for reading, along with its role as an information, entertainment and social space.

The 3-5 p.m. Nov. 28 event will include:

• Coffee, tea and cupcakes, starting at 3 p.m.
• Beginning at 3:30 p.m., a territorial welcome from a Musqueam representative, followed by brief remarks from library and community representatives.
• Historical photos and fun activities, including a chance to win prizes.

The Dunbar Library was designed by architect Douglas Shadbolt. The modern post-and-beam structure has undergone several renovations in its 75 years.  

In preparation for the anniversary, Mills has been digging into reports from her early branch-head predecessors,  and has been struck by the constant refrain that demand for reading materials was exceeding supply.

The Dunbar Library had about 7,000 books when it opened. 

The branch opened with 7,000 books (compared to 30,000 on the shelves now), but they weren’t nearly enough. Only a year after opening, the library had to limit everyone to four books each, with only one being fiction.

“All the 1950s reports  I looked at really talk about how we need more materials, there’s so much public demand. There were lots and lots of comments about how voracious and literate the reading community is around here.”

Mills, who has been branch head since September of 2022, said the early description still holds. “That has definitely been my experience in this neighbourhood. Lots and lots of voracious readers.”

The library’s changes over the past seven decades have reflected the continuing public enthusiasm for what it offers.

The Dunbar Library interior in its early days. 

There were renovations in 1967 and 1990, the latter adding 800 square feet to the current 6,400-square-foot branch, as well as accessibility and safety upgrades. In 1997, the first public internet stations were installed and “immediately put to very good use,” says Mills.

“There was immediate demand for support and learning how to use the internet, which since then has been the bread and butter of public librarians.” Even before that, she notes, the public had been using the library’s computers to access catalogue and library resources.

Changing social attitudes, technology and population have all affected the library’s contents, says Mills. Even the terminology is different: Early references to “boys’ and girls’” collections have been replaced by “children’s” collection.

Technological changes allowing quick access and sharing across the system have meant single branches like Dunbar aren’t as stand-alone and don’t have to try to be as comprehensive as they once were.

While once its materials may have been more extensive and academically inclined, what moves now is the more popular reading material – everything from fiction to home improvement, financial and business advice to cookbooks, says Mills.  “We want to meet the folks of the neighbourhood at the point of their need and interest.”

Growing populations with different languages have also had an impact. Mills says that as far back as the early 1990s, the branch-head reports “had lots of comments about how well used and how much demand there was for the Chinese collection.” Because of the steady growth of the Chinese-speaking population in this neighbourhood, she says, “we definitely do have a large Chinese collection here and it’s very well used right to this day.”

That’s all part of a system-wide change recognizing the need to serve diverse populations, and other language collections, including Indigenous, have grown. “There’s been a shift in willingness and ability to serve everyone in our communities, regardless of what they need.”

While the library’s core mission – providing a “publicly accessible indoor space where anyone can come and seek access to information and knowledge” – remains the same, long-time patrons will have noticed  some on-the-ground differences.

The library is no a longer “hush-hush” zone, for example. Instead, there’s a delicate balance between satisfying some patrons’ needs to be able to interact and others’ needs for a quiet place to read, study and reflect.

This is particularly an issue with children’s programming, with research now showing the importance of interaction to children’s learning. While bigger branches can designate separate “quietened” zones, an open-space branch like Dunbar has to work at keeping noisier activities separated from quieter reading and study zones for adults. Sometimes the library posts signs out front notifying patrons of particular programs.

Another change, though less obvious on the floor, is the elimination of fines.  When this was first proposed, says Mills, “the knee-jerk reaction was that no one would bring books back. But when you look at the data, more people are bringing their books back.”

One of the pluses – seen in other jurisdictions that had long banned fines – is that people who most feared fines because they couldn’t afford to pay if they slipped up, have returned to the system. “Eliminating fines went a long way to welcoming some of those folks back.”

Another quiet change has been the growing popularity of digital materials, with the past year seeing a higher circulation of digital materials than physical ones.  “It’s still a pretty small margin, but it’s tipped in favour of digital,” she says. “It’s been a really big and really quick shift.”

But the library’s provision of physical space for people seems to be more important than ever, says Mills.

“The demand for the space, somewhere to come, to meet and talk to neighbours or to attend a program or just a space to study or read a book to your child, really if anything has been growing. We see all the seats at this branch full all the time these days. So we’re always shifting things around, ‘can we fit one more chair in here or there?’”

In that regard, she’s grateful for the 1950s’ building that, just like older apartment buildings designed with bigger spaces, “gives us some breathing room and places to sit, and ability to wander and browse the collection in a way that some of the other tighter spaces can’t.” It’s also big enough to provide sufficient work space for a staff of about 12, a small break-room and even a tiny – stuffed with library materials – office for her.

Outside the Dunbar Library in its earliest days were streetcar tracks. 

In her research, Mills was interested to learn that before the Dunbar branch opened, there were three lending libraries on Dunbar Street in the 1940s.

According to The Story of Dunbar, a 2007 history of the community, they were usually located in gift shops that lent out books for five or 10 cents a week. They were so well-used that one owner said she had trouble keeping enough books in stock for the fastest-reading customers. And when the library branch opened, she was left with 3,000 unwanted books that eventually went to a new library in a northern mining town.

The Story of Dunbar noted the branch’s annual reports “characterize the Dunbar community as stable and prosperous, with a high literacy rate.” And, echoing Mills, it adds: “Reading is not in jeopardy here.”