Patrons asked to help break Guiness World Record Sept. 6
Published in the Sept. 3 – 16, 2014 issue of Morgan Hill Life
By Staff Report
Happy 100th birthday to the Morgan Hill Library as well as the Santa Clara County Library System. This month, the two celebrate a century of giving local patrons access to books and other media.
The county will kick-off its 100-year anniversary Sept. 6 at the Saratoga Library by attempting to break a Guinness World Record for the “greatest number of people to simultaneously balance a book on their heads at a single venue while walking 5 meters or 16.4 feet,” said Peggy Tomasso, head librarian at the Morgan Hill branch. The goal is to have 1,500 people participate, breaking the record of about 900, she said.
Morgan Hill will have its birthday bash starting 1 p.m. Saturday Sept. 20 with various events such as Wildlife Education and Rehabilitation Center animals being show to guests, a visit by kids book author Geronimo Stilton, vintage crafts, a magic show, Zumba, a Google-glasses demonstration, and the Live Oak Emerald Regime Band performing. Lunch and snacks will be sold by several food trucks.
To celebrate its centennial year and encourage more young people to use their local library, the City and the Morgan Hill branch staff have set a goal to get all local students more involved in using the library this year, Tomasso said.
“We’re going out the schools and we’re trying to get everyone to get a card,” she said. “It’s important because of the resources that the students have available here. A library card is really key for a student to do well in school. It gets them access to the materials and extra information they need. There’s also homework help that gives them that extra hand to succeed in school.”
The Morgan Hill Library has a long story. In 1909, state legislators passed a law that established the creation of county library systems, Tomasso said.
In 1912, Santa Clara County’s library system was established by the county administrators but it did not practically get its real start until 1914 when a one cent tax levy to support the county library system was passed, bringing in $3,700 a year to pay for the system. That year, Los Altos was the first city in the county to establish a county system library. Morgan Hill was second. San Martin, Saratoga, Cupertino, and Campbell also established libraries that year through the county system. The next year, the tax levy was raised to two cents, bringing the county wide library system $8,400 a year.
“The county library was also the school library system back then, so ultimately there were more than 100 libraries,” Tomasso said. “We had the only library at an observatory, which was up at Mt. Hamilton (at the Lick Observatory). They still have a bookmobile stop.”
Memorable events in the library system include the county serving in the war effort during World War II and and gathering books and sending them to overseas soldiers. The millionth book was processed in 1968 — it’s a history book called The American Album and it’s still in the collection in Cupertino.
In 1975, the county quit charging fines for childrens books. In 1982, the library system provided the public with an Apple computer activated when a patron placed a quarter into a coin-operated machine.
The Friends of the Morgan Hill Library will celebrate its 40th anniversary in October, but a date has not yet been set, Tomasso said.
“Morgan Hill has one of the most supportive communities for the library in the county,” she said. “When we did our election last year to re-do our taxes, Morgan Hill was one of the top communities in number of supporting votes. The community has always supported the library, such as the city constructing this beautiful building. They had to use Redevelopment money for this. It’s been a really nice relationship between the county library system and the city.”
The Morgan Hill Library has talked with city leaders about expanding its building in the future to include group study rooms and a off-hours accessible community program room, she said.
