Good morning everyone!  Midway through the week already!  I don’t know if I should be thrilled or panicked!  😀  Next week we as a staff have made the decision to put all of our hours and efforts into Monday and Tuesday and then we are going to close the office the rest of the week, probably working close to 12 hours each of those two days.  That means, I need to be ready for Christmas by Sunday night.  EEP!

Recently I had written a post about helping out with the Christmas decorating at our Local Library.  As a Friend of The Brainerd Public Library, we have our own decorations and we set up trees and lights, and wreaths and jazzed the place up the first part of December.  Someone at that time had commented that they did not know the friends did that – and while I am sure all Libraries are not the same, and all friends groups do not function the same… I wanted to put a plug in for joining. 😀

As books, (probably obviously…)are a big part of my life – I naturally wanted to be involved in my local Library.  When I signed up as a friend I really did not know what they did.  Two years later – I am still learning. 😀

The Friends Groups are a group that supports the library through fundraising efforts and we assist the library with purchases an needs that are not necessarily covered by the libraries budget.  As Dawn in our Friends group put it, we are the icing on the cake.  Our money raised goes for the little extras – our group personally helps with movie licensing so movies can be checked out at the library, we purchase additional copies of best-selling books (if you are from the area – when you walk in the library and see that white stand to the right that is our contribution of best sellers and these books and audio do not go on the wait list – if you are lucky and pop in at the right time you may find that coveted book!).  We assist in bringing authors in to the library (during June we bring in a Minnesota author each Monday), we assist in reading programs for children, the holiday open house and so much more.  We have two used book sales a year, and this past year added the Wine and Words event that was soooo fun we plan to do it yearly (mark your calendars – August 22, 2014).  This year we also have been working with a group of Teenagers to try to get books in their lives and create venues from their perspectives to make the teen area of our library something incredible.

My point in sharing this today is that I encourage you – Lover Of Books ( I say this in my best Narnia “Daughters Of Eve” voice) to inquire at your library about a friends group.  There is a yearly fee – ours is $5.  This goes directly into supporting our library and gives you the keys to the adventures of the Friends.  I can’t speak for all friends groups but I have seen some pretty amazing ones out there and have to say ours I believe is pretty awesome as well.

There it is.  My friends plug. 😀  Have a super day – I have a full one!  If you have any questions about Friends groups please ask – if I dont know the answer I will try hard to find out!  If you are a Friend of your library, I would love to hear about the things that you do!