

DENTON | After Davidson County commissioners included $1.1 million for the expansion of Davidson County Public Library's Denton branch in their 2007-08 budget, the library's challenge is now to raise the rest of the $600,000 needed for the $1.7 million project.
With shelves of books stacked two-deep, a storage room converted into an activities room and a cleaning closet serving as the genealogy and periodical room, the Denton Library is primed for an expansion.
"Space is at a premium," said Ruth Ann Copley, county library director. "Anybody who's been to the Denton Library recognizes that."
The expansion would add about 7,000 square feet to the 4,500-square-feet building.
Debra Swaim, the Denton branch manager, hears a large bang several times a day, usually the result of a customer trying to reach a book behind the makeshift second row on the bookshelves and knocking them all down. The shelves became so crowded the library recently held its first book sale to purge books that could no longer fit.
But it's not just the crowded shelves that need breathing room.
A closet filled with cleaning supplies houses copies of the Ladies Home Journal just above rolls of toilet paper and holiday decoration publications next to toilet bowl cleaner. And last week, the library's meeting-turned-storage room was converted into a "history's mysteries" activity room for the summer reading program.
The only significant space the library has is in its children's section, regularly used by Denton Elementary School students from across the street. In the summer, children enrolled in the reading program drop in twice a week for planned reading activities.
"Every hour, someone's using the room," Swaim said.
With the county footing about two-thirds of the expansion cost, it's up to the library to raise the rest of the money. With the county's commitment and $105,000 already raised from local businesses, families and individuals, the project is about 70 percent funded, said Jones Loflin, a co-chair of the library's fundraising team. Loflin says he would like to raise the remaining $500,000 in non-county funds within the next year.
Loflin, a motivational speaker, says he decided to take up the fundraising project because of the role reading and libraries have played in his and his family's life. Both of Loflin's daughters and his wife are avid readers and users of the Denton branch while Loflin reads the business magazines provided by the library.
"It provides such a tremendous service to the area, which has seen some tough economic times," Loflin said.
Commissioners waited to include the expansion in the budget until their June 12 meeting after delaying a vote in April. Copley says the project's fundraising efforts may have impressed the commissioners enough to get the county on board.
Kathy Swaney, or "Miss Kathy" to the children who come to the library, says the expansion will really benefit the children's program. A new "storytime" reading area is planned along with more space for computers, leisure reading and a new "teen" reading section. The library also has plans to build a meeting room that could host civic club meetings, artists or musicians.
Over the next few months, Loflin will ask for corporate donations to the project and apply for grants from public and private agencies. Loflin says his job is to tell the community, which is aware of the expansion, how it will benefit them.
"If I have 15 seconds with someone, I'd tell them the expansion increases the cultural and career opportunity for children and adults in southern Davidson," Loflin said.
"This area is growing," Swaim said. "We're hoping for construction by this time next year."
For information on donating to the library, contact Loflin at 859-9862 or jones@jonesloflin.com or Dionne Snead at 596-0353 or dionnesnead@alltel.net. To contact the library, call 859-2215.
Seth Stratton can be reached at 249-3981, ext. 226, or seth.stratton@the-dispatch.com.
https://www.the-dispatch.com/news/20070625/fundraising-efforts-start-for-denton-library
www.the-dispatch.com
crawl=CC-MAIN-2020-05
64156
application/http; msgtype=response
sha1:ECXMKZLBXFBCJZUCQPM6YJHKTI56R6AS
<urn:uuid:dbddf378-3c6f-49d1-8e6a-230a84c2ee3c>
2020-01-27T10:23:23Z
45.60.150.191
text/html
sha1:HQK5Z354UH3XMH537HWSMSTJDFUJS7KI
<urn:uuid:76b23606-632e-4e6d-bd17-d71e1a8c92ba>
https://www.the-dispatch.com/news/20070625/fundraising-efforts-start-for-denton-library
response
<urn:uuid:e1417b7c-a0c4-49bb-8a3b-f99b9419bf95>
isPartOf: CC-MAIN-2020-05
publisher: Common Crawl
description: Wide crawl of the web for January 2020
operator: Common Crawl Admin (info@commoncrawl.org)
hostname: ip-10-67-67-30.ec2.internal
software: Apache Nutch 1.16 (modified, https://github.com/commoncrawl/nutch/)
robots: checked via crawler-commons 1.1-SNAPSHOT (https://github.com/crawler-commons/crawler-commons)
format: WARC File Format 1.1
conformsTo: http://iipc.github.io/warc-specifications/specifications/warc-format/warc-1.1/