Ed Talk – A 100 years of history with the Cranbrook Library

In 1912, a visitor to Cranbrook felt “something is wrong with the people.” He lamented “In all my travels over British Columbia…Cranbrook is the only city of importance which I have visited in which there is no public library.” This was not the first nor the last complaint of this nature. Every since the railway’s arrival in 1898, the growing population wondered why Cranbrook was a town without books. Mike Selby will tell the fascinating story of Cranbrook’s struggle to obtain a public library, and how it kept it open for a full century. The story of the Cranbrook Public Library is the story of Cranbrook itself.

Bio:

Mike Selby is an award-winning author, columnist, and professional librarian. He has been a guest lecturer at universities across North America and South Africa, and has been interviewed by both NPR and the Washington Post. His book Freedom Libraries: The Untold Story of Libraries for African Americans in the South, won the Outstanding Academic Text of the Year (2020) from the Association of College and Research Libraries. More recently he was chief consultant on the film, Are You A Librarian? He is currently the Deputy Director of the Cranbrook Public Library.

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