Kirillov Central Library was founded in 1917 based on a several library collections that already existed in the town of Kirillov on the time . There were the following : the City Public library, the Free Popular library-reading room of the District Trust Committee on the people's sobriety and the Central library of the District Zemstvo (County) Council and the Library named after Leo Tolstoy.

The City Public library was established in 1882. Very few facts on its activity are known. The library budget was paid by the City Public Administration and District Zemstvo. The library  was opened to the public from 10.00  to  14.00.  A St. Petersburg's newspaper "The Week" dated December, 23 , 1884 wrote : "The funds for maintaining the library were 100 rubles given by the Duma annually, 100 rubles given by the Zemstvo and subscription fees. The numbers of subscribers are insignificant...only 46. Meanwhile there are about 4 thousand inhabitants and among them are many bureaucrats and teachers. Unfortunately these are people with a university degree who are not in the habit of reading and who are not subscribed to use the library.

We do not know much about the people that used to work in the library. In the Memorable Book of the Novgorod Guberniya for 1912 it was  mentioned that the library director of that time was Alexey Ivanovich Olkhovskiy. In 1915 there was an opening for the director position.

The Free Popular library-reading room of the district trust committee of the people's sobriety was set up in 1901. It was run  by Dobryakova Olga Nikolaevna for many years. There is a picture of her from 1901 that was preserved to the present time. This picture is now in a  Museum collection. This picture gave us an image of a young woman in a white blouse and a dark long skirt, with a high hair-do with book shelves in the background. 

The Central library of the   District Zemstvo Council was named in Memory of the 19th of February 1961. Probably it means the memory of the 50th anniversary  of the serfdom abolition in Russia . It was started in 1911 and was opened to the public from 9.00 to 14.00 and from 18.00 to 19.00 during the week and from 13.00 to 15.00 for the Public Holidays. It was available only for the Zemstvo officers.

The library named after Leo Tolstoy was also set up by the Zemstvo Committee and in this case   was  accessible for all the city   and its surrounding habitants.

Therefore, there were four libraries of different kinds   in the town of Kirillov before the revolution in 1917. Some of the books from pre-Revolutionary libraries are still preserved and one can find them in the Kirillov Museum holdings. According a professional evaluation this gives the best picture of pre-revolutionary public libraries in the Vologda Region.