State Library

On this date in 1964 the Bismarck Tribune announced that beloved North Dakota State Librarian Hazel Webster Byrnes was resigning to take a job in California. Born in 1886 in Iowa, she graduated from Iowa State Teachers College in 1910 and earned her Master’s Degree in adult education from Columbia University. She married Frank Lloyd Byrnes in 1912. After working for teachers colleges in Nebraska and Iowa she became the first librarian at Mayville State College in 1924. Her husband farmed in Petersburg.

Funding for North Dakota public libraries increased nearly 18 percent in the last legislative session. State Librarian for North Dakota Hulen Bivins said…