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Roles and Affiliations

Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh provides consistent service to the residents of Pittsburgh and Allegheny County through its unique roles and affiliations with libraries county-wide and state-wide.

Allegheny County Library Association
Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh is a member library of the Allegheny County Library Association (ACLA). The mission of ACLA – a system of 45 public libraries and Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh (70 locations) – is to promote the highest quality public library service for all residents of Allegheny County, PA. While each library is an independently governed entity, membership in ACLA enables sharing of resources, such as a common online catalog system connecting all libraries electronically. ACLA headquarters staff offer professional development, build county-wide partnerships, solicit and receive funding, and provide technical assistance to build the governance and management capacity of individual libraries. ACLA expands the resources of local libraries beyond what they could accomplish individually.

ACLA and Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh continue to work together to create an overall vision of library service in the City of Pittsburgh and Allegheny County.

District Library Center
District Library Centers receive funds from the state of Pennsylvania in order to provide support services to the local public libraries in their geographical areas. Support services that Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh provides as the Pittsburgh District Library Center include:

  • Delivery Services (Shipping) provides transfer of books, audiovisual materials, mail, and distribution.
  • Pittsburgh District Interlibrary Loan Program provides supplemental materials for location library collections.
  • Continuing Education is available for staff and local library trustees.
  • Comprehensive professional collection is offered for staff use.
  • Teen Services provides assistance with teen programs, activities, collections, spaces and training for staff.

eiNetwork
eiNetwork serves as the information technology infrastructure for libraries in Allegheny County. Through the shared catalog, libraries in Allegheny County can participate in a reserve program that enables customers at all libraries to discover and request materials from other locations and have them delivered to a convenient library.

Pennsylvania Statewide Resource Center
Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh is one of four Statewide Library Resource Centers designated by the Pennsylvania Library Code along with the Free Library of Philadelphia, the State Library of Pennsylvania and Pennsylvania State University Library. This program was established in 1961 as the Regional Resource Centers designated to acquire in-depth research collections and make them available to all residents of Pennsylvania.

For forty years Commonwealth Libraries provided financial support to these libraries to develop collections in specific subject areas. Carnegie Library’s subject responsibilities covered science, technology and business. In 2001, the program was revised and renamed Statewide Library Resource Centers. With increased state aid for the program, the focus of the resource libraries was expanded from specific collection areas to include: digitization of collections for Internet access, participation in Ask Here PA – online reference services, and direct borrowing by use of the Access PA library card, interlibrary loan and onsite use.

Expert professional librarians with the resources and services at these four libraries provide open access of their collections to support individual library customers, local community libraries and district library centers across Pennsylvania.

Library of Accessible Media for Pennsylvanians
Library of Accessible Media for Pennsylvanians (LAMP) is a network library of the Library of Congress National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped administered by Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh.

County-City Library Process
In 2014, a panel was tasked with identifying strategies for effective cooperation between Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh (CLP), Allegheny County Library Associations (ACLA), and the Electronic Information Network (EIN).

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