Celebrating 30 years of Siouxland Libraries

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (KELO) — A library system in the Sioux Falls area is celebrating 30 years this year.

Siouxland Libraries has locations across Sioux Falls and Minnehaha County, expect Dell Rapids.

You can find Kathleen Kurtz using the library in downtown Sioux Falls once a week.

The Sioux Falls resident comes to the library to study.

“At home, there’s too many distractions, so I need to have that once a week where it’s just study,” Kurtz said.

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The downtown library is one of thirteen locations within Siouxland Libraries.

While the system is celebrating three decades, local libraries started much earlier.

“Sioux Falls has actually had organized libraries since the late 1800s, and then the people of Minnehaha County outside of Sioux Falls and Dell Rapids they organized for library services in 1960,” Siouxland Libraries Director Jodi Fick said.

But in 1995, the two systems merged, making trips to the library for local book lovers more seamless than before.

“Many people who live in the county work in the city and vice versa, and so people, if they were working in Sioux Falls wanted to just go to that library on their lunch break and pick up their things, but because we were separate systems, you could use it, but you had to purchase a nonresident card,” Fick said.

The merger eliminated that issue.

As the library system celebrates the past three decades, it’s also thinking about the future and where new branches should be added in the years ahead.

Our goal is that everyone in Sioux Falls would be within a six minute drive of a library, and right now we have a few new neighborhoods that are getting out of that, so we have to be planning ahead,” Fick said.

For Kurtz, the library is an important part of her community.

“They hold our knowledge. They hold our past; they hold our future,” Kurtz said.

While Fick couldn’t release many details, she told us Siouxland Libraries is planning a special event on May 31st.