The frosted glass floors in the original Carnegie section of the Sterling Public Library are a reminder of how the building was designed with all sectors of the public in mind, a mission that hasn’t changed in more than 100 years.

“The floors are frosted because back then, ladies wore long skirts, so the floors were frosted glass for modesty, so nobody could look up their skirts,” said Jennifer Slaney, the library’s director for the past 29 years.

The glass floors and a now-enclosed skylight served another practical purpose for those using the three-story library.

“Carnegie was into natural light, and in 1904, there wasn’t electricity in use here, so you had to use natural light of some sort,” Slaney said.

The Sterling Public Library – the 1905 Carnegie library that was funded half by local donations and half by a donation from steel magnate Andrew Carnegie, and two additions in 1985 and 1995 that were both completely funded by local donations – continues to serve the changing needs of its patrons.

“It’s a community space,” Slaney said. “Libraries are here to provide information. It doesn’t matter what you ask, we try to provide it for you. To me, that’s the best thing. We are an open door.”

What’s new?

The library will add a vehicle later this year as the Sterling Public Library adds one more way to get books to patrons.

“We are getting an outreach vehicle here. We will have a book van,” Slaney said. “Our first goal with it is to get to our senior housing residences. We are going to go to events as well, so we are really excited. This is not a bookmobile. We will go and unload carts and books and go into lobbies and do stuff. We are going to have a presence out in the community.”

For Slaney, taking the library on the road is a way not only to get books to people who can’t get to the library but also to get the human touch.

“We realize we have a group of people who can’t get out, so we want to make sure, if they are staying at senior housing, that somebody is coming to them besides nurses and doctors,” she said.

Slaney said the rollout of the new van is dependent on when the van arrives. She hopes for the book van program to get started later in the fall of 2026.

The library was designed for readers and still is, offering a place to read with shelves of physical books as well as audiobooks and e-books.

“Like every library, it’s going through a transition,” Slaney said. “Technology has changed the way we do things. We still have a big budget for printed materials, and physical books are still popular, contrary to everyone’s belief. There’s still that tactile feeling of reading a book, but we also have people who say I can load 30 books onto my tablet and take on a plane on vacation, instead of carrying 30 physical books onto a plane. I understand both ways. I read on my Kindle, and I read a book in my hand.”

But the Sterling Public Library also is a public space and is used by residents who might not use the library.

“We partner with Sauk Valley Community College and VITAL (Volunteers in Teaching Adult Literacy) meets here. We do ESL (English as a Second Language) training here; we have a huge ESL class that meets here, and we are real proud of that. Our partnership with SVCC brings in residents who don’t normally set foot in a library,” Slaney said. “That is important to us, to get people in who wouldn’t think of setting foot in a library. Once they come in, they’re like, ‘Oh wow, I didn’t know you had all this.’ ”

The library offers book clubs for different ages and extensive children and young adult programming, as well as crafts, story times and a meeting place for all ages.

Staff come up with different programs to appeal to the public. One recent program was “Uber Reads,” which ran in February.

“We are all familiar with Uber Eats, the driver comes in, grabs the bag off a shelf and takes off. In this case, the staff put a book in a bag, attached a receipt to it with some sort of description of the genre, like fantasy or romance or young adult. You could read the receipt stapled to the bag but you couldn’t open the bag. You picked up the bag, they scanned it at the desk and you walk out with it. It’s a way to get people to explore a different genre of books or different authors that they are not familiar with,” Slaney said.

The library is governed by a nine-member board of directors. The library is a department of the city and funded by taxpayers through a separate line item on the property tax bill.

“I have a great working board. I can’t say enough about them,” Slaney said. “They represent the community, and they support this library and they realize that, for a community this size and a library this size, that is a huge responsibility.”