Spring Hill Public Library’s 50th Anniversary

Weeklong birthday celebration to be held April 28-May 3

By Jason Zasky

On May 3, 2025, the Spring Hill Public Library will hold its 50th birthday celebration from 2-3 p.m. "We will have a cake and refreshments, and library director Dana Juriew will speak,” begins assistant director Amber Halter, “as will members of the community who are intimately involved with the library. We are honoring the past and looking ahead to the support we might need in the future.”

The Spring Hill Library has come a long way since May 1975, when it inhabited two rooms in the old Freedmen School on McLemore Street, the first of four locations the library has called home. However, to evolve and grow, the library will continue to need input from the public.

“We’ll continue to serve the community in a way that our predecessors did, but a lot will depend on what the community wants and needs from us,” adds Halter, who has been with the library since 2018. “We don’t host programs and services just because we think it’s a neat idea. We host programs and services because we think there is a need.”

With that in mind, the library has launched a series of events that are part of the anniversary celebration.

“The first thing we kicked off is the 50th Anniversary Reading Challenge,” notes Halter. “We started that in January, and it ends on May 17. We are asking everyone to read or listen to books for 50 hours during that time period, and if they complete the challenge, they will win a tie-dyed canvas book bag with the library logo on it,” she adds, paying homage to how popular tie-dye was in the mid-1970s.

"We have had really good participation with the Reading Challenge; we’ve got over 500 people that have registered thus far,” she says, before highlighting the Dream Library Drawing Contest, which invites area residents of all ages to present original drawings of their so-called dream library. 

"The purpose of the contest is to try to get the community thinking about the future of the library. We are celebrating 50 years, but we are also trying to get the community to consider: ‘What could the library be over the next 50 years?’ We are trying to get everybody to think along those lines,” explains Halter, who says that submissions will be accepted at the circulation desk through March 31, 2025.

“We will have a panel—volunteers from the community—who will pick our first, second, and third place winners from five different age groups. The winners will be contacted on April 21,” she says, not long before a ‘Groovy 70s’ week of events gets underway on April 28, all part of the runup to May 3. 

As for the Spring Hill Library’s next few years, Halter says staffers are supporting a more diverse array of programs than ever before, including a special needs group meetup that happens once a month. Future needs could vary widely, however.

"Who knows what Artificial Intelligence will bring. Maybe we will have a tech lab to try to help with tech literacy. Or maybe we will have a kitchen, and we can teach nutrition literacy. It's whatever the community needs from us and can support,” continues Halter, who urges locals to learn more about all that the Spring Hill Library has to offer.

"We have a local history & genealogy collection that is Spring Hill/Maury County/Williamson County focused. And we have many circulating items, everything from DVDs and MP3 audio to educational games to a home school collection. We also have book club kits that people can use to run their own book club. And we have a seed library, where people can take out vegetable seeds and flower seeds to grow at their home. We have a ton of stuff; people just need to come and check us out,” she says.   

The Spring Hill Library even has its own app, which patrons can use to manage their accounts, search the collection, place holds, pay fines, review a calendar of events, and learn about research opportunities. 

Halter also encourages people to donate books and DVDs, which are re-sold, with the proceeds helping to fund the library’s programming.

“Our most pressing need is local support,” she explains. “If the community would like to see us offer something we cannot currently offer, talk to us. We want to hear that. We need vocal support at all levels.”

Indeed, Halter sees community support—not to mention the service-minded devotion of staff—as the main reason why the library has thrived, and the reason it will continue to thrive going forward.

“This city has its own public library because the community rallied together and created one. We want to honor that past work and we want to highlight how we are working to carry on that legacy today,” she concludes. “We also want to turn our eyes towards how the library might evolve and change in the next 50 years.”  

SPRING HILL PUBLIC LIBRARY

144 Kedron Pkwy., Spring Hill, TN 37174-4404

931-486-2932

springhilllibrary.org