An unlikely business opened its doors in a Northern Kentucky shopping center, a public library.

Yesterday was the grand opening for the new Kenton County Public Library branch.

Our Emily Sisk has more on the new resource and its significance for this community.

Welcome, LaTonya.

These were the sights and sounds from the grand opening of the newest Kenton County Public Library branch.

The new location is in Latonia, a neighborhood of 20,000 people just south of downtown Covington.

Dave Schroeder, executive director of the library, discussed how the development landed in Latonia.

When we picked a community, we wanted one that had a lot of kids in it where we could make the biggest impact.

Everything just kept pointing to Latonia as a neighborhood that was far enough away from our other branches.

There's five schools in this neighborhood.

There's two senior facilities in this neighborhood.

There's a couple of parks, and there are some large employers in this neighborhood.

So everything just kept pointing back to Latonia.

The library has a century old history of serving the neighborhood, but never through a brick and mortar building.

That's been the goal, however, since the early 1900s, as far back as the history of the library in Covington, it's gone.

We've talked about expanding access to the Latonia area, and so we're kind of today delivering on that promise to bring library services more directly into the community.

The new Latonia location marks the fourth library branch across Kenton County.

It's an exciting expansion for families like this.

Lomax, who live just minutes away.

My wife and I have an eight year old and a five week old, so the eight year old is really excited because she doesn't have to go to the Covington branch anymore, even though it's so close.

This is obviously closure because we're a couple of couple blocks away.

Eight year old Sophia Schlozman shared her impression of the new space.

I thought it was really cool because, because that, people had their own little section and like, it all breaks down into parts.

So people will have to be starting looking all over.

I come down, I bring my baby sister, and we can, start reading books together.

She loves it.

She wants to go back.

Probably.

She'll probably be here every day with her mom.

One of the key features of the new library is the children's area, equipped with an interactive mini museum to spark curiosity.

The children's department has really built around kind of, an open area for interactive play right now where kids and experiment with old technology and just kind of and it's kind of a hopefully to invite families to come in and talk about this because it's it's things their grandparents used or their parents used that this kids are experiencing for the first time, and they get their hands on a typewriter or something like that and just see how things work and spark that curiosity.

The grand opening was attended by not only Latonia residents, but people from all parts and northern Kentucky who wanted to celebrate the community's new resource.

The whole town has been so happy and getting word, and that's a good feeling because we need some good stuff and for our lives.

The Latonia branch has more than 18,000 materials, which Schroeder says are just waiting to be read.

If you put out a good quality service and a good quality library, people will come and use it.

And the crowd today is, you know, it's just makes that all the clear for Kentucky Edition.

I'm Emily Sisk.

More than 1600 people visited the Latonia Library on opening day.

The branch will now begin regular operating hours and of course, its summer reading program.