VINLAND, Kan. -- If you travel 10 miles southeast of Lawrence, you may come upon a small building in Vinland that just happens to be the state's oldest subscription library.

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Video: Librarian Shares Her Story

If you step inside the Coal Creek Library on a Sunday, you may chance a meeting with the librarian who's been coming to work there since 1926.

"I always like to read," librarian Martha Smith said.

Smith is direct descendant of the people who started the library in 1859. The doors to the current building opened in 1900.

The daughter of a farmer, Smith became a guide to the young.

"It was my recreation," Smith told KMBC's Bev Chapman.

There are about 3,500 books in the building with the original pot belly stove and oil lamps. Visitors are asked to sign the old register.

Poet Richard Armour once wrote that libraries are where people "lower their voices and raise their minds." The fact that the library's old books still attract is no mystery to Smith.

"They tell us everything about the world," Smith said.