Leslie Pallotta, Cranberry Public Library director, speaks to residents at the manager's coffee and conversation Wednesday evening.

CRANBERRY TWP — The library's ability to keep up with an ever-changing world was celebrated at the township manager's coffee and conversation meeting Wednesday night as the facility marked its 45th anniversary.

“The library is very important to Cranberry Township,” said Jerry Andree, township manager. “It adds to our quality of life.”

Last year, the library had 169,391 in-person visitors, said Leslie Pallotta, library director. That's about 540 people a day.

“We're constantly evolving and changing to keep up with this community,” Pallotta said as the library also marked National Library Week, running this week through Saturday.

One change is the move toward technology, although Pallotta assured residents that traditional paper books were here to stay.

The library loans out electronic books for two weeks just like its traditional materials. People can download them on their smart phones, Kindles, Nooks or other e-readers. Of the 274,574 items checked out last year, 9,288 were eBooks or audio books, Pallotta said.

She said they'll likely be getting rid of the print reference section soon, because it is hard to keep updated and almost all the material can be found in an electronic database. There were 14,917 database searches in the library last year.

“If it's in book format, chances are it's in a database as well,” she said.

Keeping up with the growth is one of the library's challenges, Pallotta said, which she admitted was a unique problem to have. The library hosted 428 programs that were attended by 13,886 people last year.

Additionally, they struggle with part time staff turnover as people want full time jobs with benefits, Pallotta said, which the library cannot offer to everyone.

The library's budget is about $600,000, with a large part of the funding, about $400,000, coming from the township.

Cranberry is one of the few municipalities that has a guaranteed millage committed to the library, Pallotta said. The library receives one mill in funding annually.

Andree said the township feels the library is one of the reasons the community is thriving, bright and growing with many families and a relatively low median age of 37. It shows through the circulation, Pallotta said, as more than 60 percent of circulation is children's materials.

“If you're going to promote reading, literature and culture, you've got to start young,” said Ed Sarver, a library board member.