An important part of the City of Humboldt held their 50th anniversary celebration Wednesday night.

The Reid Thompson public library has been open in the community since 1965.

Tony Murphy, Regional Director for Wapiti Regional Library was very happy to be part of the 50th anniversary celebration.

"What can I say, Humboldt is one of what we call affectionately one of the big five but their one of our five area resource center libraries and when you are 50  years in that's quite a momentous occasion especially for public libraries today it's good to see this kind of longevity and this kind of excitement out of an event like this."

There are some real benefits of being a regional library according to Murphy, "it basically allows a lot of smaller communities to have the advantage of infrastructural support through a regional office so deliveries, centralized payroll, things like that, centralized purchasing for the libraries, things would be very costly and would need a lot of staff at each individual library if you tried to go it on your own."

Reid Thompson librarian Rose Ward was able to explain some of the library's history.

"It was decided in 1965 to join the north central region which is now called the Wapiti Regional library and with the increase they almost increased by 3,000 books for their collection and the membership also increased so it was a good move."

The 50th anniversary event was held during Saskatchewan Library week which runs until Sunday. The library has been in it's current location on Main street since 1987.

To hear more from Murphy in his interview with Bolt FM's Andy Cohen click below.

You can hear Ward's full interview with Andy Cohen below.