“Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to get you a new library card….”
Hennepin County (Minn.) Library (HCL) has released a new library card to honor the iconic musician Prince, who lived in Chanhassen, Minnesota, until his death in 2016. The new card corresponds with the opening of the new Prince musical, “Purple Rain.”
“Our goal isn’t to have a memento. It’s more that people would get the library card and use it,” said HCL Director Scott Duimstra to the Minnesota Star Tribune. “For us, the goal was to recognize him and his connection to our community and how much he meant, and to point it back to the libraries.”
HCL partnered with Paisley Park, Prince’s former home and recording studio in Chanhassen, on the limited-edition Prince library card. The card is available to first-time and existing HCL cardholders at all libraries in the system. Prince fans who don’t live and pay taxes in Hennepin County, though, can get the cards by stopping at an HCL branch and paying a $60 nonresident fee. However, only 25,000 cards were printed and, when those are gone, that will be it, says the Star Tribune.
The Prince library cards are bringing existing patrons back to HCL—and introducing the wonders of the library to new users.
“We’re bringing in patrons who have never been to our libraries before,” Duimstra told the Star Tribune, adding that, in addition to new customers, anyone can replace their current card with the purple one. Patrons can then use it to check out anything they want from the library, including Prince’s posthumously released memoir, “The Beautiful Ones.”
Prince was a longtime, silent supporter of libraries. In 2001, his charitable foundation, Love 4 One Another, donated $12,000 to the Louisville Free Public Library’s Western Branch, earmarked for “community building” efforts. And he did it all with no fanfare, no press release, just pure generosity.
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Photo courtesy of Hennepin County Library.
