Over the past seven years, the Friends of the Library has evolved from a small but enthusiastic group of mostly Sun City residents who were eager to revive an organization that had completely disbanded, into a full-fledged nonprofit organization that is making enough money to have to worry about filing an income tax return. Second-Hand Prose, their bookstore on the second floor of the library, has matured in less than a year into a well-managed business that creates a dependable income flow for the organization. That income is the result of our community’s generous donations of books and the donated time of the volunteers who staff the store, which is open most of the hours that the library is open.
As a fourteen-year member of the library staff, I can say from personal experience that as far as funding goes, our library is not your average Texas library. We are very fortunate to have had City Council members—and taxpayers—who appreciate the importance of providing high-quality library services to the community. Our beautiful new building is obvious testimony to those values. Also, our budget from the City is far more generous, for a town of this size, than what most Texas libraries receive. However, during the time I have worked at the library I, along with the rest of the staff, have had to cope with the massive challenge that computer technology has posed to all libraries. Not only have the Old Dogs among us had to learn new tricks, but most significantly, the cost of electronic technology, in many forms, has added significantly to the pile of money it takes to run a library.
This is where the Friends come in. Since 2001, the first year they were able to give money to the library, the Friends have given us $39,500 for technology and technology-related items alone. Most years the gifts for technology amounted to 20 to 30 percent of their total donations, but in 2007, $18,500, or 44% of their gifts have been used for technology.
What kinds of things have we been buying with the gifts from the Friends? Mostly materials that our patrons want to check out, and these days that is things to listen to, whether it be books or music. We are in the process of spending $6,000 for books on CD and $5,000 for Grammy award-winning music CDs. The Friends also provided $3,000 earlier in 2007 for two additional pieces of furniture in which to store and display music CDs. Both the books and music on CD, plus our videos and DVDs, comprise a large portion of our circulation. Fourteen years ago we had none of those materials.
Another item that the Friends recently agreed to finance–to the tune of $4,000–is a group of reference databases. Information today changes too rapidly for print to keep up, but the valuable resources online are very expensive. To provide as much information as possible at the least cost, our library participates in a statewide consortium of libraries, which gives our users access to 50 databases. Our cost this year for access to the databases was $780. If we had to purchase these subscriptions outside the consortium the cost would be $124,292 per year—the entire amount we received from the City this fiscal year for library materials. We are very grateful for the State Library’s support and advocacy for the TexShare program. However, our reference librarian has identified some genealogical and legal form databases that are not included in the TexShare package, which she believes would provide answers for many of the people who come to the reference desk for help. And for those databases we are grateful to the Friends.
–Judy Fabry
