PUTNAM COUNTY, W.Va. — Libraries across the country are celebrating National Library Week.
Megan Tarbett, President of the West Virginia Library Association was on 580Live with Dave Allen to talk about the Putnam County Library.
Tarbett highlighted that the Putnam County Libraries have five locations in Teays Valley, Buffalo, Eleanor, Hurricane and Poca.
The branches offer a wide range of services that go beyond lending books.
“Our biggest priority is programming, so we scheduled out a little less than 500 programs a years for the five branches.” said Tarbett.
The programs include story times for pre k, 4 days a week in all five locations and various programs for adults.
Tarbett also emphasized that the libraries play a vital role in the community.
“We like to say that we are there to help you with the business of life, a lot our branches specially our Buffalo branch we see a lot of people who need notaries, who need things printed, they don’t have printers at home, they don’t have internet at home, so they come to the library and we help them out.” said Tarbett. “We try to do as much as we can.”
Every branch also offers a seed library.
“If you grow something and it produces a seed at the end, you can bring it back in and we can put it back into the seed library or you can just take things to grow as well.” said Tarbett.
Beyond these services, each library is also a geocaching station, each branch is equipped with computer stations, laptops for borrowing, hotspots, public Wi-Fi, they offer rooms for meetings and they even have a mobile library that travels, making the resources more accessible to the community.
The library also welcomes tutors to teach and help students.
“No institution can be everything to everyone, but the library sure tries.” said Tarbett.
Story by Ananya Rautela