Patrons of the Butler County Library who use Heritage Quest, a comprehensive genealogical Web site, were surprised a few weeks ago when access was abruptly denied.

"After days of trying, I called the library and said there's something wrong with the Web site," said Linda Ligo, 66, of Slippery Rock Township.

Ligo was told the Butler County Federated Library System had not renewed the service due to a lack of funding.

The library's subscription to Heritage Quest began last April, and Ligo, a retired dietitian who's taken up genealogy as a hobby, had found it a valuable tool when searching for her ancestors.

"I was so excited when I found out about it, because I could do [research] from home and not have to travel," she said, noting that she had been logging onto the site nearly every day. "It not only hooked you into every census in every state, but it also gave you lists of reference sources. It was wonderful."

Told that the Web site no longer takes individual subscriptions, Ligo contacted the library system to offer to fund the service on her own, but at $4,410, the cost was too high.

Instead, she's offered to donate $500 toward restoring the service if the county can raise the rest. Ligo hopes her offer will inspire like-minded people to follow suit.

I'm just lost without it," said Ligo. "I can continue to search for my ancestors, but I really depended on it."

According to Sheila Brown, administrator of the library system, Ligo is not alone. "Service was stopped on a Sunday, and on Monday I got a lot of calls from people about it," said Brown, who has since begun taking pledges towards reinstating access.

Heritage Quest was one of three online subscriptions the library system bought last year with state aid, which Brown said is the system's main source of funding. Cutbacks in state aid, however, forced it to drop all three services.

Facts on File, a library of databases to help kids do school projects, cost almost $15,000, and will end sometime in May. Learn-A-Test, which gives users the opportunity to practice college entrance exams or civil service tests, costs $5,000 and will end shortly after that, Brown said.

Of the three programs, Brown said Heritage Quest was the most popular.

"The ability to branch out and do long-distance census research was one of the beautiful things about Heritage Quest," said LuAnne Eisler, genealogist of the Butler Area Public Library. "The other thing was you could do it from your home any time, day or night. As long as you have a library card, you could get in for any of those three data bases."

Eisler said she had probably used the site five to 10 times a day at work, helping with patrons' questions, "and I'm only here about half a day. I hit it that many times from home for my own personal use."

Eisler is optimistic that enough people will donate funds to restore the service.

"One of my patrons once said that genealogists are hard dogs to keep under the porch. We're dogged when we need to be."