About New Canaan Library

Our History

The New Canaan Library has served local readers since 1877, when it was founded by volunteers who staffed it as a reading room on Elm Street, loaning donated books. In 1913 the Library moved to the corner of Main and Cherry Streets. Nearly half of that original building, the portion that is now the Richard Salant Room, was rented to the New Canaan Historical Society at the rate of $5 per year. The Library expanded in 1937, 1952, and again in 1979 with the addition of the Lapham Wing. Growth of the Library’s collection from a few hundred donated volumes to 170,000 volumes today has occurred parallel to growth in daily visitors and circulation of materials. Though books remain the core of the Library’s collection, other media including phonograph records in an earlier era, videocassettes in the 1980’s, DVD’s in the 1990’s as well as electronic information retrieval have marked the recent decades of Library progress.

Our Mission
The New Canaan Library promotes and serves the individual's right to know and encourages personal pursuit of knowledge by providing free and convenient access to books and other resources for information, education and the enrichment of life.

Click here to read a report of the July 2007 Annual Meeting of the New Canaan Library Association.