Friends of PV Library's Winter Meeting

The Friends of the Pleasant Valley Library held their regular winter planning meeting on Monday, January 24.  The primary purposes of the meeting were to elect officers for the next two-year terms, to plan for the February book sale and the annual Book Fair, and to allocate spending for the next several months. The meeting was very well attended, including two new members of the Friends and the newly appointed liaison between the Trustees and the Friends, Sally Harding. Although I am no longer a Trustee of the Library, I have been a member of the Friends since its founded about seven years ago and was glad to be among those at the meeting.

The officers for the forthcoming term will be Barbara Shapley, President; Sue McNish, Vice-President, Suzanne Nolan, Treasurer; and Daniela Pulice, Secretary.

The February sale will be called the Winter Warmth Sale--especially appealing after it reached 14 degrees below zero at the Dutchess Airport the previous night.  Media other than books will be especially featured, although there will be a selection of better lightly used books for sale as well. The event begins on February 12 (true Lincoln's birthday) and will end on February 28.  Volunteers are needed to bring books, tapes, and DVDs up from storage in the basement to the Library's Reading Room, where the sale will take place.  There will be a bag sale of media and books at a very attractive price on the last day of the sale.

The annual Book Fair is set for April 29 to May 1. Once again it will be at Town Hall and feature, in addition to books and media, a plant sale and a bake sale. I will write more about this as we get closer to the date.

The Friends support the Library in many ways, but one of the most important is using the proceeds of books sales and other events to finance activities or materials that the Library has not budgeted for out of its regular expense budget.  Over the next few months, the Friends will pay for the following materials or events:

• An e-Reader (specifically a B&N Nook) loaded with five best-selling books for use in demonstrating to patrons how to download and enjoy the books available from the Mid-Hudson e-Reader collection (as well as to purchase books or download free books that are out of copyright).
• A collection of activities for the Wii such as yoga, pilates, and suitably active games to be available for loan to patrons.
• An amnesty-for-fines month in which those owing money to the Library for past fines can have them forgiven for suitable donations to the food pantry (I will report more on this as we get closer--it will be in April, National Library Month).
• Two summer reading programs, one for teens and another for adults, with prizes to be awarded by the Friends for completion of the programs.
• Books for competition by students in grades 6 to 9 in the system-wide Battle of the Books, a challenge similar to the College Bowl that used to be on television, with questions based on a specific list of books.

The total expense for these programs, materials, and events will come to $2,900 funded by the Friends, although the Library and other sources--perhaps Pleasant Valley Rotary or Lions clubs--will also help fund some of the more expensive items. 

In addition to the regular business, above, the Friends also discussed using online resources to deal with donated books.  An organization called Better World Books is willing to take boxes of donated books that we have failed to sell and try to sell them themselves, with most of the proceeds going to a charity such as Books for Africa, or to sell rare or antique books that we select from the donated books and let them sell.

My role with the Friends includes helping to vet books to determine which ones might be valuable enough to sell separately from the tables of used books at the annual Book Fair. I have been experimenting with the Better World Books program, but it appears that me might do better trying to sell rare or antique books directly, which I can do as Bryan Bunch Books through an online resource called http://www.biblio.com/  (clicking on that link will take you to the site).  The Friends have agreed to try using this method to sell books.  Biblio.com will take a 15% commission, but we think we can do better this way than at the Book Fair.  If this plan is not working by April 29, however, we can still try to sell those rare and antique books at the Book Fair in the "Collectors Corner" as we have done in the past.