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. Housed in a local Church, the original library owned two-thousand books by 1939 when it moved to its current location—a 600 sq ft cottage. The Valatie Free Library serves the village of Valatie, the hamlet of Niverville, and surrounding rural Kinderhook in Columbia County along the scenic Hudson River Valley of New York State. 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.