The Boca Raton Public Library consists of two library facilities serving the residents of the incorporated area of Boca Raton, Florida. The City of Boca Raton, incorporated in 1925, is one of the largest and southernmost cities in Palm Beach County, Florida.
History
The Woman's Club of Boca Raton started the community library in January, 1923. The library was managed by a group of volunteers and the collection was developed from donations. It was closed in 1926 due to a land bust destroying the local economy following the Florida land boom of the 1920s, and the collection was donated to a local elementary school.
In January, 1946, the community library reopened and its collection was housed in a building located on the Boca Raton Army Air Field. Severe damage from a hurricane forced the library to close again in 1947.
Another community library opened inside the city's town hall in 1948. In these early years of the library several art exhibits were held, as part of a partnership with the Art Guild of Boca Raton. In 1955 a library and cultural arts center was planned on a tract of land donated to the partnership by library benefactors J. Myer and Hildegarde Schine, as part of a million-dollar development on a 25-acre piece of land in downtown Boca Raton; this development did not come to fruition. The Boca Raton library separated from the Art guild in 1957. In the summer of that same year, the Library filed suit to determine ownership rights of the property deeded to the joint partnership, with the library requesting that the property be divided so that each party could use a portion of the land for their own purposes. It was claimed in this lawsuit that the Art Guild never agreed to the deed in its present form due to regulations imposed by the Grantor to which the Art Guild was opposed. The lawsuit went unresolved until January, 1960, when it was decided that the land should be sold for a net sum of $50,000, with $25,000 to be given to each party.
With the help of funding from the city and donations, the library moved to the administration building of the Garden Apartments on West Palmetto Road in 1957. A new library building was completed in 1961 on NW 2nd Avenue, the location of the current Downtown Library. Construction costs for the new building amounted to $41,000. In 1966 this building was dedicated to the city and named the Boca Raton Public Library. Though it was not a public library, it was still subsidized by the city council prior to this dedication. The building subsequently underwent several renovations, including a new library wing in 1972 for a price of $120,000. Additions to the ever-increasing book collections were also made over time, with significant additions being added to the reference, local history, and children's collections. An alarm system was installed in 1976 to prevent theft.
In 1979 the Boca Raton Public Library left the Palm Beach County library system, after the County ended subsidy payments for out-of-city users to use the Boca Raton Public Library and six other city libraries throughout the county. Ever since, users living outside the primary boundaries of the City of Boca Raton have had to pay an annual fee in order to use library services, including to check out books.
A general obligation bond of $6 million was approved by the voters on March 10, 1981, with $1.9 million earmarked for a library expansion project that doubled the size of the library. About $100,000 of that was spent on replacing books in poor condition and increasing the book collection. Additional renovations were made throughout the 1990s, and although several plans were floated to expand the size of the cramped and busy Library once-more, none were actualized. A proposal that would triple the size of the library for a cost of $12.7 million was sent to the voters in 1994, who rejected the measure by 88 votes. In 1995 the library joined the city's City Recreation Services Department, and began to offer online services. Self checkout was introduced in 1999, as was the computerized system that replaced the card catalog.
In 2003 Boca Raton voters overwhelmingly approved a $19.8 million bond issue for the building of two new library buildings, after a decade of proposals and plans to expand the library being considered. The first building, located at 1501 Spanish River Boulevard, opened on January 26, 2008, and is known as the Spanish River Library and Community Center. The second building was constructed on Boca Raton Boulevard, a block north of the original Boca Raton Downtown Library, and opened in June 2013.