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The elevator at the New Castle Public Library is expected to be down for the next five to six months.

The elevator at the New Castle Public Library is expected to be down for the next five to six months.

Andrew Henley believes the role of a library has gone beyond simply being a place for people to read and check out books.

He also believes the scope and outreach of a library is beyond the the four walls of the building.

“I truly believe that the library is outside the four walls,” said Henley, the library’s director. “I believe we need to go to our community members.

“We’re looking at how can we be operational on a full county level, and provide resources that are to our community members outside the four walls of our physical building,” Henley said.

Henley said the New Castle Public Library has the largest circulating collection of e-books, audiobooks and e-magazines in the western Pennsylvania area — aside from Pittsburgh — thanks to Libby by Overdrive.

The library is the head library for the district that covers Lawrence, Mercer, Butler, and Armstrong Counties, which serves around 65,000 residents.

The library also has articulation agreements with the Seneca, Erie and Oil Creek regions, known collectively as “SNOE,” which allows material to be shared between the four districts.

Library members can either use Libby in the library or on the Libby app.

Henley said library members have access to Tutor.com, which provides online tutoring, a review of homework from elementary school to college and a review of documents for feedback within 24 hours.

Members also have free access to Ancestry.com.

“This allows people to do their genealogy free of charge, so they don’t have to pay that subscription fee,” Henley said.

Henley said the library is also a FamilySearch-affiliated library, which is through the Church of Latter Day Saints, and allows members to look up historical documents like birth records normally only visible through microfilm.

“I recently discovered my fifth great grandfather’s birth record from the 1700s and I was ecstatic about it,” Henley said.

The library is currently working with Library and Information Science master’s program students from the University of Pittsburgh.

The students are studying the perception of the library and how a proposal to have New Castle city hall relocate to the library could be managed and perceived.

The students are also studying what the library can do with the parking lot it owns, like the one on the corner of North and Jefferson streets across from Domino’s.

Henley said that parking lot is technically the only piece of property it owns, as the city owns the main library building.

“That was the original home of L.S. Hoyt and the Hoyt family,” Henley said. “When the library started in 1910, it was on the Diamond, and it was relocated to his personal home and it became the public library. That property was then left to the New Castle Public Library.”

The library this semester partnered with students from Rutgers University to help the it explore how it can help with outreach for the county Hispanic and Old Order Amish and German populations.

“We want to provide equal services for our community members,” Henley said.

The New Castle Public Library directly serves the New Castle, Laurel, Neshannock, Union and Wilmington school districts.

The Ellwood City Area Public Library and F.D. Campbell Memorial Library, which partner often with the New Castle Public Library, serve the Ellwood City and Mohawk school districts, respectively.

All students from the six school districts can use their student ID as their library card if they wish to become members. This would allow students access to the programs like Libby and Tutor.com.

There is no cost for Lawrence County residents to obtain library cards.

“We have so much information that’s easily accessible at our fingertips, and as information professionals in our community and the largest literacy organization in our region, we have to do our best to provide that information from the comfort of their homes,” Henley said.

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