By Jared Olar
Library Assistant
In our series on the history of the Pekin Public Library, we have reached the final two decades of the 20th century. That was a time that saw some very significant developments in library services due to advances in technology.
The decade of the Eighties was when personal computers became widely used at home, in business, in schools – and in public libraries as well. Here in Pekin, it was on March 5, 1984, that the library installed its first public-use microcomputer terminal. That was the era of the floppy disk, and about a decade before the widespread adoption of email and the internet.
The library’s computer terminal used the same software as Pekin’s high school and grade schools. The rules for the public-use computer allowed any Illinois Valley Library System cardholder age 8 and up to use it, while children under age 8 had to be guided by a parent or older sibling.
Another notable change in the library’s collection during those years was the result of the popularity of VHS video cassettes and video rental stores. On April 25, 1986, the Pekin Public Library added VHS video cassettes to its circulating collection. A grant of $1,500 from the Friends of the Library enabled the library to obtain videos through the Video Co-op, a group of area libraries that had agreed to sharing a rotating collection of videos.
The library continued to offer VHS movies in its collection for several years after VHS had been supplanted by DVD and Blu-ray, but withdrew the last of its VHS tapes from circulation in 2014 just prior to the library’s major remodeling and expansion project.
Of all the rapid technological changes of the past few decades, the creation of the World Wide Web has been among the most influential, bringing about profound changes in the way we live and share information. The internet arrived at the Pekin Public Library on June 25, 1997, with the official debut of six public computers that gave patrons access to the Web. The computers were installed by librarian Jeff Brooks, who had been hired April 28, 1997, as head of the library’s technical services.
As library operations were computerized and digitized during the Eighties and Nineties, by the late 1990s the library’s old card-based index files quickly became obsolete and saw less and less use. It was on Sept. 7, 1999, that the Pekin Public Library “closed” its old card catalog. From that date, no further cards were added to the card catalog. Then on Oct. 15, 1999, the card catalog was removed from regular public access, and over the following days the catalog’s cabinets were relocated.
With the closing of the card catalog, library patrons would instead search for books, music, or periodicals using “Everybody’s Catalog” on the public computer workstations. Today RSAcat computer stations are available so Pekin library patrons can search the databases of the Alliance Library System for the materials they need.
As a footnote regarding notable events in the library’s history during the 1990s, the mid-1990s saw a campaign to change the Pekin Public Library from a semi-autonomous local municipal library operated by Pekin’s city government into an independent Library District.
As a municipal library, the library’s district boundaries are the same as Pekin’s city limits, but the proposed district was to have wider boundaries that would be coterminous with the boundaries of Pekin Community High School District 303. In addition, the library board members would be chosen by the voters instead of appointed by the mayor, and the board would have taxing powers.
The referendum on the proposed Pekin District Library was defeated at the ballot box on April 4, 1995.
Next time we will review the library’s history during the first decade of the 21st century, with a special focus on the departure of the Dirksen Congressional Research Center from the library facility.
