Lavonia-Carnegie Library

Athens Regional Library System

The Carnegie Library in Lavonia, Georgia
Established	1940
Location	Northeast Georgia
Branches	11
Collection
Size	438,511
Access and use
Circulation	1,216,578 (2016)
Population served	226,216 (2016)
Members	70,165 (2016)
Other information
Director	Valerie Bell
Website	http://www.athenslibrary.org

The Athens Regional Library System (ARLS) is a consortium of 11 public libraries across all four counties of the Athens – Clarke County metropolitan area as well as Franklin County.

The ARLS is a member of PINES, a state-wide public library that includes 284 member libraries across 143 counties in Georgia. Any member of the ARLS will receive a PINES library card which grants them access to over 8 million books in the PINES circulation. The library is also a member of the Georgia Library Learning Online (GALILEO) which is a resource with over 100 databases for active members to view thousands of journals and scholarly articles.

The earliest records for a library in the region are dated to March 11, 1810 where an active Library Society was founded by a citizen named Sterling Elder. Not much else is known of this library system save for references of the society meetings in the newspaper at the time, the Athens Gazette.

The first library in the system was constructed in 1911 with funds from industrialist Andrew Carnegie. Carnegie was petitioned by the the Woman's Club of Lavonia for funds to construct a library. He donated $5,000 to start construction with the stipulation that it be managed from then on by the county.

A second library began in 1915 when two citizens of the county, Mary Oberby and L. Campbell, donated their collection of books to the public starting the Mary Overby Library. The library at this time was located on the second floor of the Ashford Building on Main Street. The Mary Overby Library ran until 1926 when it donated its entire collection to the Oconee High School Library.

With the advent of the Works Progress Administration the county Board of Trustees and Athens Woman's Club began organizing a regional library. The headquarters were based in Athens, and thus the original name was the Athens Regional Library. This was the first regional library in the state.Clarke County, Oconee County, and Oglethorpe County were all involved in this system. A bookmobile donated by the WPA was used to service the region. Book rentals were offered to residents of the county at the rate of two books allowed checked out per week, one being fiction and the other being non-fiction.