In the mid-1990s, Mary Ellen Armentrout took it upon herself to compile a catalog of Ohio’s 115 Carnegie libraries. At the time, she was the interlibrary-loan librarian at Otterbein College, whose Carnegie library now houses the admissions office, and she took The Chronicle on a memorable daylong tour of libraries large and small.

Since publishing her book, Carnegie Libraries of Ohio, she has kept up with the fates of what she calls “my libraries,” and she filed this report on the recent renovation of the Carnegie building at Cedarville University, which was one of the stops on that long-ago tour. The photos are hers too.

The little library in Cedarville, Ohio, that Andrew Carnegie financed in 1908 has been restored to its original beauty thanks to the foresight of Cedarville University administrators. Once a library open to both the college and the town, it later became the…

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