ABOUT GRACELAND LIBRARIES

Graceland Libraries has been an integral part of Lamoni. Our mission is to strengthen our community through literacy and lifelong learning by providing equal access to materials for everyone. We’re not only a place to come and read - we’re a center for discovery, creativity, and empowerment.

With our growing collection of digital media, we’re helping to engage with a new generation of learners and establishing the foundations to bring people, ideas, and information together into the future.

 

About the Frederick Madison Smith Library

on the Lamoni, IA Campus

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Opened: 1966
Floor Space: 39,099 square feet
Cost at time of construction: $877,335

 

Prior to the construction of F.M. Smith Library, Graceland College’s library was located on the top and part of the middle floors in Briggs Hall. The present library’s construction began on July 20, 1965 and the facility opened in September 1966. At the time, the library contained 50,000 volumes, which “were transported down to the Frederick M. Smith Library from the previous library rooms in Briggs Hall on Wednesday, July 20, 1966. Around 200 people, including nearly all the faculty, several summer school students, and some townspeople were organized into 25 crews in a process that began at 8 a.m. that day and concluded around 5 p.m. The original plan was to pass the boxes hand-by-hand, but this proved early on to be too tiresome, so most of the books were loaded on trucks.” [1]

 

Today the library contains over 100,000 books and millions of online resources. While the way users engage with libraries has shifted in the digital age, F.M. Smith Library remains a welcoming place for students and faculty to study, learn, and engage outside of the classroom.

 

[1] David Goehner, The Graceland Book of Knowledge (Independence, MO: Herald Publishing House, 1997), 110-112.