The Valatie Free Library serves the village of Valatie, the hamlet of Niverville, Kinderhook Lake, and surrounding rural Kinderhook in Columbia County along the scenic Hudson River Valley of New York State.
Begun in 1928 as a casual circulation of collected books, the Valatie Free Library Association was chartered in 1931 by the Valatie Parent Teachers Association. The original library was housed in a Methodist Church, and owned two-thousand books by 1939 when it moved to the Carney Building on Main and Church Streets. Within the year, it moved again to its present location in a nineteenth century converted cottage at 3203 Church Street. During the 1970s-1980s, an idealistic all-volunteer staff kept the library going.
The Valatie Free Library's forthcoming Capital Construction project, an iconic and near-Net-Zero hybrid library building will be created through the retrofit and expansion of the Kinderhook Steam Railroad Freight Barn on Rt 9. The new library will include an energized landscape of learning and access to information for all age groups as well as provide a centralized location and facility that meets multiple community needs, i.e. community hub for the library's chartered district.
As part of the Mid-Hudson Library System (MHLS), VFL provides access to over 2.5 million items (books, DVDs, etc). The system connects the library to the five-county inter-library loan system and coordinates exchange of library materials with other libraries.
The Valatie Free Library is a registered 501(c)(3) organization and all gifts and donations are fully tax-deductible.
