Behind the Stacks at GMPL, Part I

Postcards from Grafton

One of our guests this episode, Tami Mullins, at GMPL back in the day.

We had a small technical issue this episode. Around the 2 minute mark when Tami is discussing summer reading, Kari's microphone cuts out. It lasts until around 04:22 when we replaced the batteries. We apologize for the inconvenience!

A lot of things happen in a library, like having storytimes in an old bank vault. Or discovering a dozen donuts in the wall when renovating. Or finding an abandoned kitten during a summer reading kickoff. Or making dozens and dozens of chicken paprikash meals as part of a levy campaign. This episode features three Grafton-Midview Public Library veterans, Tami Mullins, Lauren Baldwin, and co host Fred Backstrom, chatting about what library land is really like.

Harriet Spitzer spearheaded efforts to organize a free public library to serve the Grafton community in the early 1940s. In 1944, the Grafton-Midview Public Library was chartered as a school district library. The Library was housed in the Grafton School on Elm Street for decades before moving to a vacated bank building on Main Street in 1971. In 1991, a renovation expanded and updated the building. The Grafton-Midview Public Library is one of seven independent public libraries in Lorain County and serves approximately 24,000 residents in Grafton Village, Grafton Township, Eaton Township, and parts of Carlisle Township and Elyria. For more information about GMPL, visit https://www.gmplibrary.org/. Make sure to check out the Grafton-Midview Public Library collection on Biblioboard for more pictures, newspaper articles, and documents at https://library.biblioboard.com/anthology/1f1c6db4-f8ed-49f3-bbd6-8ce90158f8db.