Porter County Public Library System

PCPLS offers over 100 computers with Internet access and Word Processing capabilities throughout the 5 branches in the system.

Residents of the library district are eligible for a library card. The library district includes 11 of the 12 townships in Porter County, Indiana: Boone, Center, Jackson, Liberty, Morgan, Pine, Pleasant, Portage, Porter, Union, Washington. For those not residing in the townships listed above, reciprocal library cards are available for free providing they have a library card from the home library, the home library has a reciprocal agreement with the Porter County Library System, and the home library card is in good standing.

The Porter County Public Library System is comprised of 5 branch locations in Hebron, South Haven, Kouts, Portage and Valparaiso Indiana. *63.4% of Porter County residents have library cards *81,656 registered borrowers *The cards were used to borrow 1,394,230 items in the last fiscal year *Porter County residents received assistance with 61,283 reference questions in the course of the year *724,014 patrons used the library *The library presented 1,711 programs attended by 43,030 children and adults *The library's collection now stands at: 425,544 books 86,850 periodicals & newspapers 15,205 microforms 12 online databases 26,908 videos, DVDs and CDRoms 22,959 audio recordings 1000 magazine subscriptions 185 computers available for patron use

The free public library opened on October 26, 1905 in Valparaiso. In 1911 The Carnegie foundation donated $20,000 for a new building and on October 23, 1916 the Valparaiso library opened to the public. The Fortnightly Club established the Hebron Public Library in 1917. On October 20, 1969 the Kouts Library was opened in rental property on Main Street. In 1976 the entire building was purchased and a $50,000 renovation was begun. September 26, 1970 the Portage Public Library open in rental quarters in the Portage Mall. On July 1, 1973 the city and county contractual libraries merged to form the Valparaiso-Porter County Public Library. On March 4, 1975 the South Haven Library opened to the public and in 1984 the board agreed to change the name of the library district to the Porter County Public Library System. The Hebron Public Library merged with the Porter County Public Library System on July 1, 1990 to become the county's sixth library branch. In 1996 PCPLS completed a massive remodeling and new construction project for all five library branches and received the 1996 Library of the Year Award by the Indiana Library Federation. In 2005 PCPLS celebrated their Centennial Anniversary and was awarded the Indiana Library Federation Programming Award. Go to: http://www.pcpls.lib.in.us/History/Anniversaryhome.html for more information.