WARSAW — Every year that passes a new gadget is released; from the IPod’s of the last decade to Google Glass in 2013. With the ever changing world of technology, it can be hard for many of the organizations that serve the community to keep up. In particular, local libraries have to rise to a number of challenges and adapt with the changes of our community.

“I have not seen our role change. I’ve seen it expand and grow deeper,” said Ann M. Zydek, the library director for the Warsaw Community Public Library. According to Zydek the age of devices has had an overall positive effect on libraries across the country. “We can reach more people … We’re able to have material that we wouldn’t otherwise have room for in the building,” she said.

The WCPL has been following a plan of expansion and adaption for the past several years in their effort to keep pace with a growing community and the changing needs within it. This plan has been to refocus the library from a merely physical to a physical and virtual resource, from an individual to a more community-oriented service and from an archival design to a portal design. The portal design would allow people to access information from other sources, not just the ones belong to the library.

“Our challenge is to keep up with our changing world. The libraries of the future must provide ongoing access to a wealth of information in both print and electronic formats,” Zydek said in a press release.

But what does the future have in store for WCPL? “We started with eBooks and audiobooks, and now we’re going to get into eMagazine subscriptions,” said Zydek. “Our future role is to keep track of what our community needs and to remain flexible in order to meet those needs,” she continued.

The WCPL offers many digital resources of which card-bearing members can take advantage, including:

• Overdrive- A downloading service that offers ebooks, audiobooks and video.
• Freegal- A music downloading service that lets users keep any songs that they download.
• Tumblebooks and Jumblebooks Jr.- An ebook and audiobook service that carries children’s books as well.

For more information and to access some of these digital resources, visit the Warsaw Community Public Library’s website.