Library administration staff

Contact the Salem Public Library using email, phone, mail, or by visiting in person.

The Library's Administration Office is located on the Plaza Level of the Main Library. The office is available by phone 8 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Monday through Friday.

About Salem Public Library

Salem Public Library is part of the City of Salem. The Main Library is at 585 Liberty St SE, next to the Civic Center in downtown Salem. The West Salem Branch Library is located at 395 Glen Creek Road NW.

Volunteers from the Salem Women's Club founded Salem Public Library in 1904. The first library was in a corner of the Salem City Council Chambers. The library moved into its own building in 1912, and to its current location in 1972. The building underwent a major renovation and expansion in 1991 that added 3,500 square feet of space to the Main Library. The City of Salem completed a seismic and safety renovation of the Main Library and reopened in October 2021.

The West Salem Branch Library began in 1957 in the old West Salem City Hall, and has been at its current location since 1995.

Salem Public Library benefits from strong community support from the Library Advisory Board, Friends of Salem Public Library, and Salem Public Library Foundation.

Salem Public Library is guided by a Strategic Plan developed in cooperation with support boards and other community stakeholders.

Land Acknowledgment

The area known today as Salem has been inhabited by the Santiam band of the Kalapuya people since time immemorial.

The Santiam Kalapuya lived in the area known as Salem-Keizer today, and throughout the immediate Willamette Valley area, south into neighboring Linn County. Their staple food and most important trade item was the nutritious bulb of the camas plant, which grew in abundance in the Willamette Valley and was managed by the people through the use of fire.  Oak acorns and tarweed seeds were very important traditional foods for them as well. They spoke a dialect of Kalapuya very similar to that of the Mary's River band who lived in the area of Corvallis. In 1851, the Santiam Kalapuya signed a treaty which would have retained for them a reservation in the heart of their homelands, but it was never ratified by Congress. Instead, the Willamette Valley Treaty of January 22, 1855 (which the Santiam Kalapuya signed), was ratified by Congress, which provided other rights and benefits for them but not their own reservation.

As with most of the tribes and bands of western Oregon, disease epidemics brought by Euro-Americans devastated the populations of these peoples, and in some cases their surviving members and/or descendants had either incorporated into neighboring bands or assimilated into the larger settler population out of necessity by the 1850s. After the signing of the Willamette Valley Treaty in 1855 (through which the entire Willamette Basin was ceded to the U.S. in exchange for certain rights and benefits), many of them were moved onto small temporary reservations, and later to the Grand Ronde Indian Reservation where they became members of the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde. Their descendants live on as Tribal members today, carrying on the traditions and cultures of their ancestors, the original people of this land.

Source: Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde