The Lake County Public Library is the third largest library system in the state of Indiana.
In June of 1952, the Lake County Public Library system was established, even though it contracted services through the Gary Public Library until 1959. In February of 1978, the LCPL Board approved a $6,650,000 budget for expansion of the Central Library (current location). The architects were Perking & Will of Chicago and George N. Hall of Griffith. The groundbreaking was held on July 11,1979 and the building was completed on March 2, 1981. The new addition added 67,000 square feet, making it a total of 97,000 square feet.
The Merrillville branch began renovations in June of 2011 and was completed in 2013. The Merrillville branch is home to a genealogy and Indiana room containing state and local research materials.
Under the direction of Ingrid Norris, LCPL started digitizing their high school yearbook collection with OCI in 2015. The digital files were uploaded to Archive.org to share with the world. The project went so well, that the library then digitized their entire archival collection of the Library’s Newsletter called Happenings.
In 2018, genealogy room librarian Lynn Jackson, coordinated an effort to choose materials of historical importance to the Lake County community from history files and book collections. These items were then sent off to American Digital Memories for digitizing, thus preserving the collection for future generations to come. The collection also helps people who can’t visit the library search the items online for historical, biographical or genealogical research. ADM made the process easy. They always follow up with a phone call and email. The results are a quality product with the ability to keyword search text.
Ingrid Norris told American Digital Memories, “We know that what we do as libraries may change, but as community needs change, the library changes to match. Once upon a time, people wanted to educate themselves with textbooks. Today, people need digital resources and Internet access. They need to download, to upload, to connect, to meet up. We will help them do that. Digitizing a portion of our local historical collection and making it accessible is one of the ways we’ve continued to improve and help our community.”
You can find our digital collection at: https://archive.org/details/@lake_county_public_library