Good morning! Happy Tuesday! Yesterday morning I made apple butter with our apples from our trees and my home this morning still smells like cinnamon and apples….
mmmmmm.
Yesterday afternoon I went to a workshop in Roseville Minnesota to network with other Friends Of The Library. It was pretty fun and they used our Friends group in Brainerd for many examples – website description of what friends of the library do, our Wine and Words event, summer brown bag author events… it was cool to know that we were on the right track in many ways.
I enjoyed listening to the other things that friends are doing in other areas – 5k walks and runs, bowling for books, and my personal favorite (wish I would have thought of it!) The Great Gatsby Gala that they had planned to make $20,000 and they raised $47,000! Holy smokes!!!! Granted it was in the bigger Minnesota cities so more people and more money… but still…. WOW. I hope to attend this one next year so I can see what they are doing up close.
I think the saddest thing at this workshop was the Itaska Friends group. Their library is open one day a week; Wednesdays from noon to 4 pm. That is heart breaking, yet this group raises money and awareness for their library through book sales, and being in the Fourth Of July parade.
One emphasis they put out there was being POSITIVE. I could not agree more. Having negative people on your teams sucks the life and energy out of the team…. in any circumstance. You need to stay positive and work to make events fun!
Anyhoo… it was a good time, it was fun meeting others in Minnesota in Friends groups. I did not arrive back home until 11 pm last night, but was able to listen to audio for my 2+ hour drive each way so that made it awesome 🙂
Does Your Library Have A Friends Group? Are you a part of it? What does your group do?
Book Journey 
I was part of the Friends of the Library in Auburn but haven’t joined here. 😦
You should Kathy! What an asset you would be! 😀
Sounds like a fun and informative event! The stats on how much money Rochester raised got me thinking about relative population size.
Rochester raised about 43 cents per person (dividing $47,000 by a population of 110,000). Comparable fundraising for the Brainerd-Baxter metro (13,000) would be about $5,550. : )
Thanks Lisa, that makes me feel a little better… but seriously – can you imagine what we could do with that kind of money? 😛
They do and can you believe that I am not part of it (yet). Right now they meet during the days and I just can’t pull that off with work 😦
You can be a part of the friends group even if you can not make the meetings. Get in there! 😀
During my life I have have been associated with 2 different libraries. In both cases there would not have been a library without the volunteers. One was in Bouse, AZ. Here everything was donate, building librarian, books. When I became involved it had been operating for a couple years. The county had decided to pay the librarian. This was a winter resident community.
The other was an incorporate area in southern Nevada. There was no funds for books. Many of my books went there when I was done with them.
That is so interesting. I think of the things we battle locally and then see what others are dealing with like you mentioned here – no funds for books, etc… we really do not have it so bad.
I think I need to come and work at your library, you seem to have such a wonderful working environment
We just value our friends 🙂
Thanks for sharing your thoughts. The events sound wonderful and the emphasis to be POSITIVE is great!
I agree 🙂 Life is too short to be negative 😉
I’m so impressed you made your own apple butter! I love apple butter – makes me want to go get some right now!
🙂
No friends groups, but a number of book reading groups which I belong to. Just enjoyed a lovely catch up here, sorry I have not been popping over to comment much recently.
Glad to see you around 😉
I am not in our Friends of the Library group, BUT your posts about your experiences always make they think I need to join.
I hope you do!
I pay my annual fee to join the Friends group but when I put on my yearly application that I’m willing to volunteer, I get a great big, “Thanks but we’ve got it covered.” Seriously? It frustrates me. I don’t even know when they meet.
WOW! That response actually makes me mad!!! You can be a member of our group ANY TIME! 😀