Friends of the Library celebrating and recruiting volunteers

Written by on October 18, 2016

There are few things more magical than books and there are few local people more passionate about them than the Silver City Friends of the Library.

This week, Friends of the Library organizations around the country will be celebrating National Friends of the Library Week and the Silver City Friends group is taking the opportunity to encourage the community to get involved by becoming a member or volunteering.

Established in 1992, the Silver City Friends of the Library is a nonprofit 501c3 organization and has raised over $375,000 for the library. Excluding salaries, the Silver City library functions on only $43,000 a year so without the $12,000 to $15,000 the Friends of the Library contributes to that budget each year, many of the library’s free public programs, staff travel and training, equipment and supplies would be out of reach of its budget.

“It’s a really great group of people who work really hard on our behalf and we wouldn’t be able to do the public programming that we do without the Friends,” said Silver City Library Director Eileen Sullivan. “We really don’t have funding in our regular budget for things like the Summer Reading Program and many of the children’s events throughout the year, craft supplies and other things that we need for those programs, bringing in presenters or our adult programming.”

The Silver City Friends group raises most of those funds through book sales — one an ongoing in-library sale and the other a quarterly book sale held at the group’s bookstore on Market Street. These sales raise an average of $10,000 for the library annually.

With hardcopy books priced at only $1, paperbacks at 50 cents, and books for early readers and elementary school students free, the bookstore makes it possible for local teachers and families to buy books.

“It’s the most affordable bookstore in town!” said Silver City Friends President Linda Gray.

Bookstore manager Frost McGahey says the variety of books is also impressive.

“It’s just incredible the range and the subject matter of books we get. I have books out there about all kinds of birds, higher consciousness, past life regression, tarot, Abraham Lincoln, lots of history and Southwest history. I mean, we just have an amazing variety that I’ve never seen at any other Friends of the Library and I’ve been at several other places that have Friends of the Library.”

The Friends of the Library also assists by sorting through the large quantities of books dropped into the donation bins in front of the library. The best books are added to the library shelves and the rest find new homes via the Friends’ bookstore.

Managing the huge numbers of books that are donated each year is a demanding task and the Friends need more volunteers to help empty the donation bins and transport the books to the bookstore where more volunteers are needed to help sort the books for the quarterly book sales.

Current Friends volunteers say the work is tough but rewarding.

“This library is a little jewel for a town this size. We have just such an amazing library,” McGahey said. “The library staff is great and they do so much with so little resources. Some days when I’ve worked two hours in a hot, sweaty container sorting books I think, ‘God, I can’t do this anymore,’ I just think, ‘It’s for the library,’ and that keeps me going.”

“I grew up here and my library card until they changed systems was number two. So to me, to see the library grow and to change over the years, it’s just awesome,” says Friends Bookstore manager Barbara Guber. “I’m a nurse and I worked at the hospital a long time and everybody always said, ‘Are you going be a Pink Lady at the hospital when you retire?’ And I said, ‘No! I’m going volunteer for the library doing something. It’s just a matter of being part of something that’s so awesome.”

Becoming a member of the Silver City Friends group is as simple as filling out a short application and requires no volunteer commitment, and dues are as low as $10 a year.

To find out more about becoming a member or volunteering, visit the Silver City Library this week, where Friends will have a table set up with information, or contact Gray at 575-538-2505 or email [email protected]

Robin Austin may be reached at [email protected]

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