August 1942 — If it doesn't rain

On Wednesday, August 19, 1942, Miss Lilly M. Borresen, chief librarian of the La Crosse public libraries, told the Tribune when the north side would be moving.

"If it doesn't rain, Thursday will be moving day at the north side branch library."

— The La Crosse Tribune, August 19, 1942

There were ten thousand books to shift from the old building to the new one. It was expected to take at least a week, and the branch would be closed the whole time. City trucks would haul them. The library's regular staff of six would pack and unpack every volume by hand.

In March 1905 the north side's library was 225 books on a shelf in a drug store. In August 1942 it was ten thousand books, six members of staff, and a convoy of city trucks going four blocks up Caledonia Street.

Borresen was the same chief librarian who in July 1941 had given the Tribune the branch's whole history, and who had said that circulation was a perfect barometer of unemployment. She had watched the figures climb from 1,862 books in the first four months of 1905 to 89,634 in the worst year of the Depression, out of a rented room with a partition down the middle.

And then it was a week of carrying boxes, and hoping for dry weather.