From NKAA, Notable Kentucky African Americans Database (main entry)
Georgetown Colored Branch Library (Scott County, KY)
(start date: 1923 - end date: 1956)The Georgetown Colored Branch Library was established in 1923 in the home economics room in the Ed Davis High School with Betty Webb as the librarian. She was assisted in the library by high school girls. Betty Webb was also the home economics teacher at the school, she was a graduate of Kentucky Industrial College [now Kentucky State University]. She received library training at Morehouse-Spelman Library Institute for Negro Librarians in 1930. The colored library in Georgetown, KY, was established with the help of Rachel D. Harris who was a librarian at the Louisville Free Library Colored Department. The Georgetown Colored Library shelves were filled with discarded books from the Georgetown Public Library that was segregated. The colored branch library was renamed the Charles Steele Branch in 1933. There had also been county libraries for colored teachers in Scott County between 1895-1908. According to the Georgetown Public Library report to the Kentucky Library Extension Division in 1956, there were unrestricted library services to Negroes. For more see Library Service to African Americans in Kentucky by R. F. Jones; "[Kentucky] Library Annual Report" for 1923, submitted to the Kentucky Library Commission from Georgetown Public Library; Report of the Superintendent of Public Instruction of the State of Kentucky for Two Years Ended...for the years 1895-1908; M. M. Spradling, "Black librarians in Kentucky" in The Black Librarian in the Southeast by A. I. Phinazee; Directory of Kentucky Librarians, 1st ed. by the Junior Members Round Table of the Kentucky Library Association; and Report of the Library Institute for Negro Librarians, Atlanta, 1930 written by Charlotte Templeton.