William Henry Egle, the state librarian from 1887-1898, was instrumental in diversifying the library collection. As part of his term, Egle emphasized the importance of expanding the library’s newspaper collection to include one or two papers from every county depending on their population size. Egle was also influential in obtaining a larger space for the library. During his term, Egle warned of unsafe conditions in the library such as fire hazards and poor insulation of electrical wires. After forming a close relationship with the governor, Egle and a team of forty men were able to move more than 100,000 books to a new library building in December 1894.