Beyond the district: reciprocal since 1968

THE COUNTY LINE CROSSED BY AGREEMENT · NO BOOKMOBILE OF ITS OWN ATTESTED

The district ends at the LaPorte County line, but the library's service does not — it crosses the line by agreement, and has since 1968. The reason is the school: the New Prairie United School Corporation draws its students from both counties, while this library's tax district covers only the St. Joseph County side. The staff manual states the arrangement and its purpose in the library's own words: "We have had a Reciprocal Borrowing agreement with the LaPorte County Public Library since 1968 and we maintain this agreement primarily for the benefit of the students in the New Prairie United School Corporation." Reciprocal agreements with the Mishawaka-Penn Public Library and the Michigan City Public Library stand beside it, and when the St. Joseph County Public Library began granting privileges to residents county-wide, this library followed the same policy in reverse. The staff manual's service statement runs wider still: full service to many who reside in LaPorte County, Hudson Lake named among them — Hudson Lake, the unincorporated lake community just across the line, is functionally part of this library's town. The modern instruments complete the picture: the library signed the Indiana State Library's Statewide Reciprocal Borrowing Covenant on February 20, 2018, and its cardholders carry the statewide Public Library Access Card besides. Those outside every agreement paid, in the staff manual's mid-2000s accounting, a nonresident fee of $150 — "to be fair to the taxpayers supporting our library," in the manual's phrase. Two checklist items close inside this article at their honest sizes. The library has no branch: one building has always been the whole plant, so the branch roll the checklist asks for is a single seat, carried in the buildings articles above. And no bookmobile or book wagon of this library's own appears in any record this section reached — the mobile service here was never a vehicle but a web of agreements, and the state statistics series' outlet records and the board's minutes stand as the settlers should a deposit collection or outreach route ever need proving either way.

Principal sources: the library's Staff Manual (the 1968 agreement and its purpose, the companion agreements, the Hudson Lake service, the nonresident fee — read whole); Indiana State Library, Statewide Reciprocal Borrowing Covenant list (the library's covenant dated February 20, 2018; list revised July 2, 2024).