Janet McCoy is the kind of woman you’d expect to run a library: Calm, collected and soft-spoken. But her effect on the county’s library system has been anything but quiet and her work may echo for years to come now that McCoy, 59, is retired.

McCoy — who has seen the library change over the past 16 years from a place that barely knew technology —  is the one who started a process that may see the library increase its space and technological capacity well into the Internet age.

“I think technology-wise it’s been an incredible 16 years of progress,” she said, adding the library had gone from zero to 20 public Internet terminals in the time she’d been there.

But only so much technology, community meeting space and other programs can be shoehorned into the library branches across the county. In Napa, the City-County Library takes up a whole block, with no room to go but up. In Calistoga, the library building was constructed in 1924 and shows every year of its age, McCoy said.

The library in American Canyon that she established years ago with a parked bookmobile is still too small to support the burgeoning need of the fastest-growing community in Napa County.

To combat these problems, McCoy shepherded a January 2007 report that highlighted the county system’s deficiencies — notably a lack of space and technology compared to what patrons these days expect. McCoy said the report showed the county’s libraries were about half the size they needed to be.

While the county has no money to start expanding library services, the report could soon serve to qualify the library system for a state grant should a voter-approved library funding initiative pass. A recent initiative failed in 2006, but McCoy hopes another initiative will come to state voters in the future.

“It’s tough to start the groundwork when you know you’re not going to be there,” she said. In fact, all that future work is one reason McCoy decided to retire now rather than wait another year. She likes to finish what she starts, she said, and retiring now was one way to avoid getting even more embroiled in expansion plans.

“The time just seemed right,” she said. “Sometimes you feel there is a threshold of a new time to begin.”

McCoy plans to use her newfound free time to travel and spend more time with her church and family.

In a way, McCoy embodies both the traditional librarian and the trend in new technology. In her spare time she volunteers at her church, but at a task that is unusual for most people her age: She manages the Web site.

“These are things I look forward to doing well rather than just tinkering,” she said.

Cindy Watter, chairwoman of the county Library Commission said she will miss McCoy’s leadership.

“It was wonderful to work with her,” she said. “She had a great personality. She was popular with the staff and has a low-key sense of humor, always appropriate, very lady-like.”

Watter said McCoy took patron’s comments very seriously, even the frequent complaint that there was no place serving coffee in the library — something McCoy said there was no space for.

“She wanted our library to be a library for everybody,” she said. “It’s a place for people who care about literature but, it’s also a place for people who are changing their lives. ... She took very seriously the charge to be the best library that we have.”

Danis Kreimeier has already started as the new Napa County library director.