All this month we've highlighted our history here in the Today at CPLs, and celebrated the anniversary with special blogs posts of 30 items a piece. In case you've missed some, here are not-quite-30 lists of 30:

• 30 Favorite Pet Books
• 30 Entertaining Ways to Go Green
• 30 Best Films You've Never Seen
• 30 Absolutely Indispensable Items for Foodies: an Amazingly Idiosyncratic List
• 30 Notable 30s
• 30 Years of Detroit Sport Championships
• 30 Things I Remember
• 30 Evergreen Books of Our Time
• 30 Gifts We've Gotten From Our Friends
• 30 Books Everyone Should Read
• 30 Home & Garden Favorites
• 30 Favorite Religious Thrillers Like The Da Vinci Code
• 30 Albums I've Worn Out Over 30 Years
• 30 Big Links of 1980
• 30 Fugitive Facts
• 30 of the Best 30s

We've covered the 1980s and the early 2000s this month as we look back over CPL's 30-year history. But what about the 90s?

The image at right is the letter from the director, Jean Tabor, in the January 1994 issue of the library newsletter. You can find this and more historical images in the 1994-95 scrapbook.

What's interesting about this letter is that the technology has changed since then, but the end result is largely the same. In 1994 we had a few computer terminals networked together to offer databases on CD-ROM. Today, we still offer Health Reference databases, though we recently switched from Newsbank to other news databases. You can still read Just Grandma and me, though we only have it in conventional book form now instead of CD-ROM.

And what about that laserdisc? Well, we don't have it anymore, and it's not available on DVD. However, you can check out Master Paintings from the collection and American Masterpieces, or just visit the gallery's website for a full catalog of art with many of the pieces digitized and available online.

What sort of technology will CPL use 16 years from now?

When the library opened in 1980, the population of Canton was around 48,600, according to SEMCOG reports. It took the library nearly four years to circulate one million items. This clip from 1984 reports a circulation rate of one item every 35 seconds that the library is open.

Our circulation rate rapidly increased and in 2002, serving a population of around 80,000, we hit the one million items a year mark, giving us our reputation as the state's busiest single-building library.

In 2009, we set an all-time circulation record when 2,015,317 items were checked out. That's a rate of one item every 6.44 seconds, or about 22 items for every Canton resident. Our circulation remains high and to help handle the workload, in 2010 we installed a state-of-the-art automatic sorting machine.

In December, 2000, a large assortment of tiles designed by Canton Children were installed in the Children's Library as part of our expansion project. The tiles in the reading nook were co-sponsored by Canton Project Arts, Canton Community Foundation, and CPL. If you haven't before, stop in the Children's section and see the great tiles in the reading nook!

For the last 30 years the Canton Public Library has tried to provide the best customer service and resources for the Canton community. Our staff works hard to serve our community and have been recognized often for their efforts. Here are just a few of the awards received by CPL staff, or as we like to call them, our Rock Star Librarians.

Library Director Jean Tabor received the Michigan Library Association Award of Excellence in 2007 for her outstanding contribution to effective and improved local library service, promoting library cooperation and contributions to professional and community activities. Jean was also recognized by the Canton Business and Professional Women in 2004 with the Athena Award.

Anna Slaughter, one of our teen librarians, was honored with the Frances. H. Pletz Award for outstanding quality of service to teens in 2010.

In 2000, Children's Department Head Judy Teachworth was presented with the Children's Services Award of Merit from the Michigan Library Association for making an outstanding contribution to library service to children and young people in Michigan.

Adult Department Head Rebecca Havenstein-Coughlin received the Canton Rotary Award of Excellence for 1991-1992 and also the Community Service Award for dedicated service to Community Literacy from the Canton Rotary Literacy Committee for 1993-1994.

In addition, the Canton Public Library was named a Library Journal Star Library in 2008 and 2009.

In 1997, we received the American Library
Association "Library of the Future 1997" award for the innovative development
of the Cyber Kids room and its policies.

Even our landscape has won awards, thanks to our Friends of the Library. Our READ berm facing Canton Center Road has won many awards, including several Canton Chamber of Commerce and Canton Township beautification awards and, in 1997, a statewide Award of Merit from Keep Michigan Beautiful, Inc.

For more CPL 30th Anniversary celebration, check out 30 Home & Garden Favorites.

Today is Opening Day! Thirty years ago today the Canton Public Library first opened its doors for business. Although there were still boxes to unpack, books to catalog and shelve, and dozens of other tasks to complete, the library was ready for the public. Shown here in this Canton Observer photo is Canton resident Carol Micksch, one of our first visitors, checking out a stack of books with the assistance of Deborah O'Connor, the Head Librarian.

In 2009, CPL checked out over 2 million items. We averaged around 2,000 visits each day by our community and 70,416 Canton residents had library cards.

We continue to celebrate National Friends of the Library week and our 30th anniversary by profiling the Friends of the Canton Public Library.

The Friends of the Library have existed since the idea for a Canton Public Library was conceived. It's fitting that the Friends as an organization would precede the library as well. According to the most reliable records we have available, the Friends first met November 27, 1979.

Since then they've had a few more meetings. Our scrapbooks, starting in 1979, show a long line of meetings, events, gifts, book sales, fundraisers, and other great things sponsored by the Friends.

To further celebrate our 30 years and learn more about our Friends, check out 30 Gifts We've Gotten From Our Friends.

Hey Kids!
You may have noticed that there's been lots of talk in the library lately about CPL's 30th anniversary. There are only a very few people who've been a part of Canton Public Library as long as I have, so I thought I'd chime in with my own experiences here at CPL. You can find my story on the library's Flickr account. Yup! I'm a pretty tech savvy bear. In some of the pictures I look kind of funny because they were taken a long time ago. You'd better not laugh!
While I never lived in the library when it was in the other building, I have seen the current building get renovated and the Children's Department transformed into what it is today! That was fun! That summer I earned my hard hat!
I also made lots of friends over the years. Some of the kids that used to see me at the library have grown up and now work at the library themselves! Isn't that amazing! I like to think that I helped them make decisions about their future careers.
I love meeting all you kids at Summer Reading, First Grade Round-up and Storytime. You really make my day. Working at CPL is so much fun, I don't ever want to retire! So when CPL has it's 50th anniversary, expect to hear from me! :)
Bear Hugs!
Thorndyke

The New York Times Bestseller Lists reflect the zeitgeist of a given era. The authors and types of fiction, and the subjects of the non-fiction can give us a hint what was on America's collective mind at a given time. Today we look at the books on the NYT Lists on October 20, 1980; the day we opened our doors to the public:

The key to Rebecca by Ken Follett

Firestarter by Stephen King

Rage of angels by Sidney Sheldon

The tenth commandment by Lawrence Sanders

The Bourne identity by Robert Ludlum

Free to choose: a personal statement by Milton & Rose Friedman

Men in love by Nancy Friday

Anatomy of an illness as perceived by the patient: reflections on healing and regeneration by Norman Cousins; introd. by René Dubos

Loon lake by E. L. Doctorow

Random winds by Belva Plain

Come pour the wine: a novel by Cynthia Freeman

Sins of the fathers by Susan Howatch

Music for chameleons: new writing by Truman Capote

The sky's the limit by Wayne W. Dyer

Goodbye, darkness: a memoir of the Pacific War by William Manchester

Ingrid Bergman, my story by Ingrid Bergman and Alan Burgess

Lyndon, an oral biography by Merle Miller

For more CPL history, check out 30 Things I Remember from Adult Service Department Head Rebecca Havenstein-Coughlin.

In our 30 year history, the Canton Public Library has connected readers with authors, both on the printed page and with live author visits. In November of 1991, Detroit-based author Elmore Leonard, fresh off the release of Get Shorty, visited and signed autographs for patrons. In 2006, Everyone's Reading author Robert Kurson told a spell-bound audience his true adventure tale of shipwrecks and scuba divers in Shadow Divers. That year we also sponsored Sonya Sones, popular teen writer, on a visit to the Plymouth-Canton high schools. National Book Award nominee MT Anderson presented his historical fiction book The Astonishing Tale of Octavian Nothing: The Pox Party. Another Everyone's Reading author and 2004 National Book Award winner Kevin Boyle spoke to a packed house about his book, Arc of Justice: A Saga of Race, Civil Rights and Murder in the Jazz Age, a true story of the trial of Detroiter Ossian Sweet. Recently, we hosted Detroit author Michael Zadoorian as he read from his critically acclaimed book, The Leisure Seeker. One of our most popular programs was the  visit of attorney and master of the crime fiction genre, Scott Turow. His book, Presumed Innocent, was the 2010 Everyone's Reading selection.

You don't have to be famous or a best-selling writer to have an author talk at CPL. We also host an annual local author day that features up and coming Canton and surrounding area authors.
(photo, left to right: Elmore Leonard, Robert Kurson, MT Anderson, Kevin Boyle, Sonya Sones, Michael Zadoorian, Scott Turow)

In 1984, when Canton Public Library was only 4 years old, we participated in an important anniversary celebration. 1984 marked Canton Township's Sesquicentennial. To mark the occasion, the Township published a "Time Capsule" newspaper with historical information and other interesting tidbits. One of the ads in the paper was from the Canton Public Library to the people of Canton.

If you would like to see this wonderful artifact and perhaps get a copy of your own, check out the Canton Historical Society. Here is an example of the fascinating things you can find when you explore Canton's history; an article by Canton Planner Jim Kosteva, entitled A visit to Canton in 2034: indelible memories:

It was May, 2034. We were traveling back home to Cincinnati after our weekend respite in the Traverse-Mackinac resort center. The areas' natural vibrancy refreshed me after two months of virus-free medical research in space.

Possibly as a reminiscent gesture or maybe just out of fatigue, Rebecca suggest we stop in Canton, the place we both knew as children. "We haven't been back there in years," I said. So, after agreeing, I reprogrammed our CTV, and my thought immediately turned to Grandpa. When he wasn't showing off his flowers, Grandpa would take us for drives in his old gasoline car and talk endlessly about the paths of Indians, Henry Ford and sweet corn in the summer. But we were children then, just children, and we took his words as ancient mumblings. As we coursed the tracks of the 275 express, I began realizing just how indelible those memories had become.

Our Compatible Track Vehicle then announced that I would regain manual control in three minutes at the Ford Road interchange. The trip from Mackinac had taken only two hours.

With the exception of the housing towers dotting the major corridors, Canton had not experienced much housing construction since the 2010's. Away from the interchange, we spotted the neighborhoods which largely blended into one another, but had grown stately in their own way. Although at first glance the homes appeared dated, inside, families were in touch with the world. Business transactions, education and even medical care began and ended in each communication den. The self diagnostic and treatment programs were the most phenomenal, bringing the world's best physicians into homes via micro chips and phone lines.

Many local businesses had become those pre-ordered pick-up places for anything and everything. Although home computer ordering schemes had cut the number of small merchants deeply, almost all of the plazas had put on larger, new architectural faces and many were connected. Surprisingly, the old Meijer building was still visible under the shroud of its new distribution center with its own track link to the 275 express.

The wide roads with a through track in each direction gave way to those in the western half and in typical fashion most roads here were with programmable track. The next view staggered me as sweet corn green had given way to a cellophane sheen. The remaining farms were large low greenhouses now, not only with radiation traces from the Greater Asian War still being detected with the regular host of contaminents, the recent move to agribubbles made sense. The hunger of three and one half billion people helped initiate the war and the indiscriminate explosions only hastened the enclosures and strict land protection policies. Though long expected, the deadly blasts shook the world back to its senses and into a production tailspin from which we had yet to emerge.

Traveling southwesterly, we received such a treat! Much of the Cherry Hill settlement was still there, but the sleek movements of our CTV made us feel out of place. The buildings were better kept than ever and had become popular as a rare mecca for homemade goods.

As we bumped along an older road, we spied children playing on a field I remember as much larger. It was strange to see them outside without protection suits, the recent alert having temporarily been lifted. They were laughing and running, busy with their games, echoing how we used to race around Grandpa's wooden barn. Continuing on, we drove past the old Township hall. Once graced with specimen trees and now a regional resource library and art center, it looked stark and weathered. The unprotected timbers had weakened in our recent environmental debacles. Only the roof glistened as light reflected a small set of solar mirrors. Local government operation had been transferred to the Western Wayne Enclave 20 years ago. The resistance to the Enclave had been as great here as to regionalism was throughout the country. But when individual communities folded under the pressures of services costs and infrastructure replacement needs, there was new viability in joining together.

Moving south of the road that Grandpa said once carried Sauk, stagecoaches, and Studebakers we were taken aback by the massive parabolic mirror energy station that stretched for more than a mile. Its power lighted the towers as dusk turned to night.

My own dusk was turning to night and I became entranced with my own mortality and the things that had changed since those sunny days with Grandpa. I saw once again those roads not taken, the paths toward peace and pure air. But now I as a grandfather was determined to treat my daughter's son to those entrenched memories of Indian trails and sweet corn, or settlements and subdivisions. And note for him that in fact all of the paths were still here.

The Cady-Boyer Barn

The establishment and growth of the Canton Public Library over the last 30 years has closely mirrored the development of Canton Township. Once a farming community known as the Sweet Corn Capital of Michigan, the township experienced phenomenal growth in the 1980s and 90s as its 36 square miles were booming with housing and industry development. According to the Canton Historical Society, in 1961 the population was 5,300. At that point, Canton incorporated into a charter township, one of the first in the state, and added police, fire and municipal services. By the 1980s, the population had exploded to 48,616 and continued expanding to today's count of nearly 90,000 people. SEMCOG predicts Canton's population will reach nearly 99,000 by 2035. A prime location between Detroit and Ann Arbor, near universities, hospitals and an international airport has helped Canton become a desirable community in metro Detroit and helped the Canton Public Library become the busiest single-branch library in the state.

For more of our 30th Anniversary celebration, check out 30 Absolutely Indispensible Items for Foodies: an Amazingly Idiosyncratic List.

As we'll learn more about later, our current building opened November 13, 1988. At the time, it was 31,500 square feet, which allowed the library to house about 149,000 items.

An expansion took place over 2000 and 2001 that gave us an additional 22,000 square feet, for a current total of 53,500. This additional area allowed us to have over 300,000 items and to serve our growing population better with more rooms, seating, and overall space.

Many photographs from the re-opening of the expanded Children's Library can be found in the Canton History project. You may also enjoy these pages from our old website talking about the expansion, courtesy of the Wayback Machine.

On August 25, 1992, President of the United States George H.W. Bush visited Canton Township as part of his '92 campaign. After a campaign rally address in Heritage Park, President Bush attended an economic summit at Canton Public Library with Michigan Governor John Engler.

• Digitized photos of the events
• President Bush's remarks from the rally
• Argus-Press article about the rally
• Canton Eagle article about the rally [page 46]
• American Libraries write-up about the visit [page 47]

More materials, courtesy of the George Bush Presidential Library:

• Published remarks from the Bush-Quayle Rally
• Press Pool Report #2 from NYT
• Speech cards of rally remarks
• President Bush's annotated schedule for August 25, 1992

Special thanks to the George Bush Presidential Library for providing these wonderful artifacts.

Also, celebrate CPL's 30th with a contest related to this post, or with 30 Favorite Pet Books.