Jun 8, 2015 2 min read

When Washington’s Citizens Library opened on April 25, 1965, the Beatles’ “Ticket to Ride” had been in record stores for a little over a week, and the Rolling Stones’ “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” and Bob Dylan’s “Like a Rolling Stone” were still a few months down the road. “The Sound of Music” was making its way around the country, and parts of the Midwest were continuing to recover from an onslaught of tornadoes two weeks before that left more than 200 people dead and more than 500 people injured.

As the doors to the colonial-style structure opened, there was no way its librarians, or any of its supporters, could have imagined the directions the library would take over the next half-century. Card catalogs have come and gone, and the Internet would open a portal to the wider world. Silver discs now contain music and movies and can be taken home at no cost. And readers can now check out books from the library that can be enjoyed on mobile electronic devices that would have seemed the epitome of science fiction 50 years ago.

Some people ask if libraries are still relevant in the 21st century, when information is available in a keystroke or two. The answer? A resounding yes. For proof, consider the photo featured online with the Observer-Reporter‘s Sunday story on the library’s 50th anniversary – it showed Daisy Bailey, a resident of Fort Wayne, Ind., researching her family’s history in the genealogy section. She made the five-hour trip solely for that purpose. Along with all the other valuable functions libraries fulfill, they are irreplaceable repositories of a community’s history.

And that fact alone leads us to believe libraries will still be relevant 50 years from now.