Directly across the street from the Connecticut State Capitol in Hartford, the Connecticut State Library serves as both the state's library and an executive branch agency. This is not only a building of books; it commands a role: providing library, information, archival, public records, museum, and administrative services to the citizens of Connecticut and to the employees and officials of all three branches of state government. Students and researchers from across the state consult its collections, public libraries and town governments turn to it for support, and the library directs a program of statewide library development while administering the Library Services Technology Act state grant.
Its mission, in its own words, is to preserve and make accessible Connecticut's history and heritage and to advance the development of library services statewide. Its story begins with an act of the Connecticut General Assembly in May 1854, when the Connecticut State Library was established and James Hammond Trumbull was appointed the first State Librarian; there have been only eleven State Librarians since, and the collections were first kept in the State Houses. Look across the street to the Connecticut State Capitol.