Friends of the Forest Grove Library

Ongoing book sale at the Library

Friends are selling donated books in the Library all the time! Look for a steel book case near the main (east) entrance. You’ll find donated books in great condition with new stock on a regular basis. Prices are marked on the cover. Hardcover adult books are $3, softcover $2 and children’s $1. Pay at the Circulation (or “checkout”) desk: cash or checks only, please.

Another way you can help us is to donate books.
The books you bring to the Forest Grove City Library will be:
1. Checked by the library’s professional selectors to see if they want to them to the library’s collection and if not,
2. they will be checked by Friends volunteers to see if they are worth listing for sale at our online store (part of Amazon.com) and if not,
3. they will be added to the mass of books we sell at our twice-yearly Friends used book sales.

Of course, we prefer books in good condition. Vinyl records, CDs and DVDs all in good condition are welcome, too. Please do not donate magazines, VHS tapes, pamphlets, maps, encyclopedias or Readers Digest condensed books.

Up to two boxes or bags of books can be donated at the front desk of the Library. For larger donations or your other questions, please call 503 530-9353 or Email us at fgcl.friends@gmail.com

As ever, all proceeds go to the Library!

Friends Spring Used Book Sale

Schedule
The sale will begin with a Members Only Pre-Sale, Wednesday evening, May 13 from 5:30 to 7:30. Only current Friends of the Forest Grove Library members will be admitted. Memberships may be acquired or renewed at the door.
The general admission sale is scheduled for Thursday, May 14 through Saturday, May 16. Hours correspond with the Library’s open hours: Thursday 9:30–7:30, Friday and Saturday 9:30–5:30. Over 8,000 books and other media will be on sale.

Prices
Hardback books are $3, mass market paperbacks (4″ wide) $1, other paperbound books $2, children’s books and coffee table books are priced as marked, CDs, LPs and audio books are $1 and multi-title media sets are $3.

Members Discount
On Friday, May 15, current members of Friends of the Forest Grove Library get a 20% discount on their purchases. Memberships can be started or renewed at the book sale. Dues remain the same: $10 Individual / $20 Family / $35 Contributing / $100 Sustaining. Members receive twice-a-year newsletters announcing book sales and the Friends annual meeting.

Bag Sale
On Saturday, May 16, all shoppers can fill standard brown paper grocery bags with books and other media and pay just $10 per bag full.

You can help
Volunteers make the sale possible. We need and appreciate your help with set-up (Monday, May 11 to Wednesday, May 13), the sale itself (Thursday, the 14th to Saturday, the 16th) and to clean-up (the morning of Monday, May 18). Please call Katie Allnutt at (971) 322-7933 to schedule your preferred job and time slot. Volunteers get two free books of their choice for each shift.

Dealer alert: Friends volunteers have screened book donations and library discards and removed some of them for sale online.

A Word from Martha Robertson, President of Forest Grove Library Friends

And the word is “Yes.” Please vote yes on Measure 34-345, the Library Levy renewal on the November 4th Special Election ballot. Voting yes will ensure continuation of current library hours, children’s programs, purchase of books and other materials and your access to online eBooks, audiobooks and other resources.

Our library’s budget has three sources. One is donations. The second is City property taxes. The third and largest is County funds, again derived from property taxes.

Forest Grove City Library is a member, by contract, of Washington County Cooperative Library Services, a county government agency. WCCLS is funded by property taxes funneled through the County General Fund and a Local Option Levy that must be renewed every five years. The levy provides 45% of WCCLS resources.

Since 1976, WCCLS has relied on these temporary levies for all or part of its support for countywide public library services. With few exceptions, county voters have approved these levies by significant majorities. Recent levies have been approved by more than 60% of voters.

WCCLS now provides about two thirds of the funds needed to operate 16 libraries in the county. For Forest Grove’s Library, the levy portion of WCCLS funds is about 26% of its total budget. How would our library maintain hours, children’s programs and book purchases without those funds?

Please vote yes on measure 34-345 to keep our beautiful library humming!

Martha Robertson, President, Friends of Forest Grove Library

Friends contributing to the Library

Colleen Winters, The Forest Grove City Library Director, recently sent this email to the Friends Board.

HI, Friends,

At the meeting on Wednesday, I mentioned that Nathan had compiled a list of Friends purchases this year.

Here is the list and as you can see, it is quite a range of items and demonstrates how important your support is to the library.

Thank you very, very much.

Colleen

Things Friends have purchased for us this year:

Shelving for our Storytime closet – two wire shelves and two metal countertop shelves for working on crafts.
Snacks like pizza, drinks, and popcorn for TLC events, volunteer work parties, and other programs.
Poinsettias to decorate the Library during December.
Plexi glass signage hangers and fixative for entire building. Every shelf, every emergency sign.
Materials for adult art programs
Giveaway toys and prizes for Library Card Sign-up month and other contests.
200+ stickers and other fun items each month to give away to people who finish library scavenger hunts.
Summer Reading prize baskets for teens.
Branded promotional items for Banned Book Week.
A Keurig coffee/tea machine for staff room
Bottled water, hand warmers, and other supplies to distribute when we encounter someone in the building in need of basic human care.
Performers
Incentive Books for Summer Reading Program – about $2,000 last summer, and more probably an additional $2-5K next summer.
Donations for Meals on Wheels People for Adult SRP.

And that is just this year and isn’t nearly exhaustive.

-Colleen

Friends Update Strategic Plan

The Friends of the Forest Grove Library Board has updated their strategic plan for the third time since the initial one in 2015. During that span, the goal initially rated near the bottom has moved to first while the initial top goal is now the lowest.

In the current top ranked goal, “Recruit, train and retain Board members and volunteers,” the Board recognizes that current members, many of whom have been serving for decades, must be succeeded by younger members to achieve these goals.

Here are the goals in the new version, by priority.

Recruit, train and retain Board members and volunteers Add members. Recruit, orient, train and encourage active volunteer participation in Friends activities including serving on the Board.
Provide cultural education and cultural opportunities for public Maintain and improve the role of the Library as a cultural hub for the community through educational and cultural programs.
Enhance image of library in community (advocating, promoting) AND Support Library Staff Maintain and increase public support for our Library. Encourage the work staff does by funding their program requests, participating in their programs and giving personal recognition.
Raise money to support items 1, 2 and 3 Engage in activities to raise funds for the Library, to support Friends-sponsored public programs in the Library and to cover operating costs incurred by these fund-raising activities.

You can find the full text of the plan here.

What you can do to help:

Donate to Friends and/or join! See the “Donate” and “joinFriends” pages on this website.
Attend Friends annual meeting Wednesday, April 10 at 5:00 in the Rogers Meeting Room.
Come to the Spring Used Book Sale May 16-18 during library hours.
Volunteer your time: moving donated and sale books in the library (about an hour a week), checking Amazon prices for donated books (2-3 hours a week), sorting books for the sale (2-3 weekly), managing the Friends website or other social media venues, shipping sold books (an hour a day Monday through Friday), listing selected books on Amazon (2-3 hours weekly), pricing and arranging books for the ongoing sale shelves in the library (about four hours a month).
Or volunteer for the twice yearly book sale events: recruiting and scheduling volunteers, moving books from storage in the library to the Rogers Room, arranging books for the sale, sale clean-up, working at the sales desk during the sale, moving leftover books to storage or other sites away from the Library.

To find out more about these volunteer opportunities, email Friends fgcl.friends@gmail.com

Or contact Mike Smith: 503 530-9353

What happens to the books you donate?

Books and other materials donated to the Forest Grove City Library are first reviewed by Library Staff to see if they should be added to the Library’s inventory.

For those that are not selected, and for books de-selected from the Library collection by staff, Friends of the Library volunteers check used book prices online to pick out those that are valued at $8 or more. Most of them will be put on sale at Amazon.com under Friends’ dealership name, “forestgrovelibraryfriends.” Friends have more than 2600 books on sale through Amazon and these online sales will net more than $8,000 for the Library during the Friends fiscal year.

Books in good condition that are not selected for online sales are sorted by Friends volunteers for the twice-a-year book sales and for ongoing sales in the library. The twice-a-year sales are Friends’ primary income source. They have been making about $10,000 a year. The ongoing in-library sales are a new Friends project.

Making money for the Library is one of Friends’ top priorities but this process for library donations and discards has other benefits: (1) Between donations and discards, the library has around 12,000 books to dispose of every six months, (2) turning donations away would be bad for the Library’s public relations, (3) friends efforts make money for library programs and help recirculate these books in our own community.

Help Friends Help Your Library

Have your income taxes done at H&R Block, and take this form to your Block Tax Professional. If you are a new Block customer, the company will give $20 to Friends of the Forest Grove Library.

Another way to easily donate to Friends is through the AmazonSmile program. When Amazon customers log on through the smile.amazon.com site, 0.5% of the sales price of most of the items they purchase will be donated by the Amazon Foundation to Friends of the Forest Grove Library. No cost is incurred by either the purchaser or Friends. None of the purchaser’s privileges at Amazon (Amazon Prime benefits, for example) are affected when buying through AmazonSmile.

The first time you log on to smile.amazon.com, you will be asked to name the non-profit organization of your choice. To do so, there is a search option. The registered name for Friends is Friends of the Forest Grove Public Library, Inc.

This is an easy way to help your Friends of the Library and your Forest Grove City Library at no cost to you! Make it a habit to log on to Amazon through smile.amazon.com.

Or write a check! We don’t have a ‘donate button’ on this website yet but don’t let that stop you from donating to Friends! Send your check, with a note that it’s a donation, to: Friends of the Forest Grove Library 2114 Pacific Ave. Forest Grove, OR 97116

Friends’ federal tax ID: 93-6089869

Why Libraries?

People who sit in front of their computers all day pontificating are asking why, with all this information technology, do we still need bricks-and-mortar libraries?

The library is a community center where people go to get good information and entertainment free of direct charge:

It is a place where everyone is welcome
Where they can find a quiet place to sit.
As in other (increasingly rare) ‘third places,’ people visiting the library run into people they know: that helps build community
The library has meeting rooms that provide neutral territory for public discussion of public issues.
It enhances life in its community and is a point of public pride.
It increases property values in its community
It is an inheritance for future generations
It is a place to go to help find needed information without being charged and without pressure to buy something.
It is a place where a torrent of information is turned into useful knowledge.
The public library building is like a public park for the mind and it is open 12 months a year. People use it in any weather and the play equipment is amazing!
For the have-nots, whose numbers are increasing, public library buildings provide:
broadband access,
free computers,
advice from trained professionals,
access to the arts,
access to the best of our country’s culture,
help learning English,
help raising literate children,
help finding a job,
and access to an economic system that demands they communicate via the Internet.

More people are going to bricks-and-mortar libraries than ever. [Put down those Oreos, turn off your computer, see the light of day and visit a real public library, oh geek.] No other public institution exists for the purpose of providing free information to anyone.

More background/perspective:

From Dan Duray, “Rescuing the Stacks”, New York Observer, 6/6/2010:

http://www.observer.com/2010/culture/rescuing-stacks

“The public library is the most powerful and cost-effective wealth-transfer mechanism ever invented. Instead of simply ameliorating problems, libraries create opportunity. As generations have learned, the aisle between the shelves is a corridor out of poverty, a bypass around inadequate schools, an expressway that adds momentum to even a first-rate education.”

Will Sherman, “33 Reasons why Libraries and Librarians Are Still Extremely Important”
http://www.collegeonline.org/library/adult-continued-education/librarians-needed

Among the reasons:

· Not everything is available on the internet
· Internet complements libraries but does not replace them
· School libraries and librarians improve student test scores
· Digitization is going to take a while; a long while
· Libraries aren’t just books
· The [ebook] hype might really just be hype
· Google Book Search “don’t work”
· Physical libraries can adapt to cultural change
· Physical libraries are adapting to cultural change
· The internet isn’t DIY
· The internet is a mess
· The internet is subject to manipulation
· Libraries can preserve the book experience
· Libraries are stable while the web is transient
· Not everyone has access to the internet
· Not everyone can afford books
· Libraries are a stopgap to anti-intellectualism:

“It’s not that the internet is anti-intellectual; its academic roots and the immense quantity of scholarly sites certainly attest to it being a smart medium…

[but] Access to books and theories from hundreds of years of cultural history is essential to progress. Without this, technology could become the ironic tool of the sensational and retrograde cultural tendencies. Preserving libraries to store knowledge and teach the limitations of technology can help prevent the hubris and narcissism of technological novelty.”

Where Friends’ Money Goes

As you can see, below, Friends of the Forest Grove Library has many activities to raise funds. The Forest Grove Library Foundation’s Capital Campaign is one obvious recipient. On what else does Friends’ spend their hard earned money?

Cultural programs
Friends have scheduled and sponsored a series of cultural programs, which include lectures and music, each winter and spring, for decades. They have made Forest Grove’s contribution to the countywide Hearing Voices program and they fund the Adult Summer Reading Program.

Forest Grove Conversations
Friends have financed and organized this annual topical program featuring panelists and a town hall discussion.

Teen programs including the Teen Summer Reading Program

Children’s programs
Since Friends started in 1973, they have been the major contributor to the Library’s children’s programs. These include the annual B.E.A.R. Month, Dia de los Ninos and Summer Reading Program.

Volunteer recognition events, Wassail Party and equipment for the Library.

Capital campaigns
Friends of the Forest Grove Library was a major contributor to the Forest Grove Library Foundation’s million dollar capital campaign that remodeled the west end of the Library and will be an important contributor to the Foundation’s current $500,000 campaign for library furniture and equipment.

Friends used book sale goes online

In addition to Friends’ twice yearly book sales at the Library, we have begun selling donated books online. Friends has become one of the many organizations selling through Amazon. We list books in Amazon’s huge database and have the advantage of participating in that gigantic marketplace. So far 80 books have been listed and 11 sold at an average sales price of over $24.
If you would like to see all the books we have for sale online, go to Amazon, choose the book catagory for your search and enter forestgrovelibraryfriends in the search box.
We need more books! The books you donate to the Forest Grove City Library are (1) considered for addition to the Library, (2) checked for prices online–those with low prices over $10 are usually added to our Amazon listings–or, (3) the books are sold at our twice a year sale.
Please give us your unwanted books! Just drop them off at the Library or call the Library 503-992-3247 to arrange to have them picked up by Friends volunteers.
Every cent Friends makes goes toward your Forest Grove community library!