With gas and groceries taking a bigger bite out of paychecks, more people are looking for ways to be entertained and educated without spending a lot of cash.
That makes libraries more popular than ever.
Yoga classes, movie nights, video-game marathons, even spa nights are free at Allegheny County libraries.
Library usage continues to grow, fueled by diverse programs, a focus on computers, online resources and non-traditional book genres such as anime, said Beth Mellor, marketing and member services coordinator for the Allegheny County Library Association.
The number of registered members at county public libraries rose by nearly 40,000 between 2002 and 2006, a 7 percent increase.
"With the public libraries, there's been more of a focus of 'What does my community need? How can I best serve my community?' " Mellor said. "People are looking for jobs. People are cutting back on external entertainment, so they'll go to the library to get a video or DVD. Plus, the majority of the library programs are free."
Robin Gibson, children and young adult librarian at Northern Tier Library in Richland, said she thinks libraries are becoming a center for people to learn and socialize. This summer, Gibson, who earned a bachelor's degree in acting from Point Park University, is helping 23 children put on a play that she wrote. The program attracted children who often come to the library and some who hadn't, she said.
"I think libraries more and more are figuring out that to stay alive, they have to be able to constantly evolve, and they're becoming more of a community center," Gibson said. "Instead of only having the church or the school as your community center, now the library can fit in those sorts of places for families as well."
Andy Ebel, who has one of the lead roles in the play, took an acting class Gibson offered at the library in February and decided to come back because he had so much fun.
"Now that I've been here a couple of times, I miss it when I'm not here, and I want to get a library card," said Ebel, 12.
Northern Tier Library also offers programs for adults. It has a knitting club, "Ladies Night Out" movie events, computer courses and parenting classes. Books are the library's main attraction, but librarians want to provide services for people who aren't avid readers, said Diane Illis, the library's communications coordinator.
"We're still focusing on books," Illis said. "Even though it's what we traditionally started out to do and still a large part of what we do, it's not everything. We want to offer things for other people, too."
South Park Township Library offers audio books that can be downloaded to MP3 players. Library director Sharon Bruni hopes to start a program that would allow patrons to download movies on home computers. The files are erased after a week or three weeks, depending on the material borrowed, she said.
Bruni said the library's in-house DVD and CD collections are more popular than its online offerings. She expects the downloadable files to be in demand in the future.
"We feel that libraries in the past have had a tendency to not be current," she said. "We see what the future will be, so we're trying to accommodate that and make it available to the public."
Not all library services are popular, so librarians experiment to find programs that interest people. Braddock Carnegie Library offered yoga classes last winter that weren't well-attended, director Anita Greene said. The library might offer an aerobics class this fall, and Greene plans to start a recipe club patrons asked for.
The busiest part of the library is its computers section, Greene said. The library has six computers for adults and three for children, and sometimes people wait to use them, she said.
Demand for Internet-accessible computers depends on how many community members own personal computers, said Mellor, of the county library association.
"We realize that in the county, not every person has access to a computer," she said. "And we're finding, especially in distressed communities, the library is becoming a hub for those people to have access to the Internet."
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