The Lee County Library (LCL) is a

public library A public library is a library that is accessible by the general public and is usually funded from public sources, such as taxes. It is operated by librarians and library paraprofessionals, who are also Civil service, civil servants. There are ...

system in

Southwest Georgia Southwest Georgia is a fourteen-county region in the U.S. state of Georgia. It has a 2010 census population of 496,433, and is the least populated region in Georgia, just slightly behind Southeast Georgia. Additionally, the area has historically ...

, United States, located in Lee County. There are four branches associated with the system, with the Leesburg library serving as the central headquarters. LCL is a member of

PINES A pine is any conifer tree or shrub in the genus ''Pinus'' () of the family Pinaceae. ''Pinus'' is the sole genus in the subfamily Pinoideae. The World Flora Online created by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew and Missouri Botanical Garden a ...

, a program of the

Georgia Public Library Service The Georgia Public Library Service (GPLS) is the state agency for libraries in the U.S. State of Georgia and a unit of the University System of Georgia. The service was initially founded in 1996 after the inception of the Library Services and T ...

that covers 53 library systems in 143 counties of Georgia. Any resident in a PINES supported library system has access to the system's collection of 10.6 million books. The library is also serviced by GALILEO, a program of the University System of Georgia which stands for "GeorgiA LIbrary LEarning Online". This program offers residents in supported libraries access to over 100 databases indexing thousands of periodicals and scholarly journals. It also boasts over 10,000 journal titles in full text. The Lee County Library won the 2015 Library of the Year award presented by the Georgia Public Library Service.

History

Lee County was originally a part of the

Kinchafoonee Regional Library System The Kinchafoonee Regional Library System (KRLS) is a public library system serving the counties of Calhoun, Clay, Quitman, Randolph, Terrell, and Webster, in the state of Georgia. The headquarters of the library system is the Terrell County Pu ...

, joining the neighboring system through the outreach of the public schools superintendent in 1954. Joining the Kinchafoonee System had additional perks of the use of a bookmobile, and the expansion of a county-wide library collection available for inter-library loan. In 1961 the Town and County Club of Leesburg, a civic and cultural club for women, sponsored the Leesburg Branch of the Lee County Library. It was housed in two rooms from the Georgia Railroad Depot and supplied with books from the regional library system, State Board of Education, and county government. The Smithville library began planning in 1977 and officially opened in 1979 in the town's old depot. The Smithville Community Development Group raised the funds required for the construction of the building and further secured the library as a branch of the Kinchafoonee Regional Library System. In 1995 Lee County decided to leave the Kinchafoonee system and create its own single-county public library system.

Branches

Library systems in neighboring counties

Lake Blackshear Regional Library System The Lake Blackshear Regional Library System (LBRLS) is a public library system covering the four counties of Sumter, Crisp, Dooly, Schley, Georgia, United States. The Lake Blackshear Headquarters Library is located in Americus. The system is ...

to the north * Worth County Library System to the east * Dougherty County Public Library to the south *

to the west

References

External links

PINES catalog
{{authority control County library systems in Georgia (U.S. state) Public libraries in Georgia (U.S. state) Libraries established in 1979