Karen Gleason
The 830 Times
(Editor’s Note: Portions of story highlighted and underlined link to the Facebook page mentioned.)
As the song says, we all get by with a little help from our friends, and the Val Verde County Library is no exception.
The Friends of the Val Verde County Library and the Val Verde County Library are partners whose association benefits the entire community, Friends members and library staff say.
According to a new brochure on the Friends, its members “support the Val Verde County Library with their annual summer reading program for all ages and other events not covered under the annual county budget and promote the library in our community.”
On Wednesday, current Friends President Susijac Settle, a retired educator, and several other Friends members joined Barbara Galvan, reference librarian and the library’s Friends liaison, and other library staffers in the library’s large community conference room to prepare for the Friends spring book sale.
“All of the proceeds from the book sale go towards the library’s summer reading program and other programs not covered by our annual budget. We’ve been doing this, oh, I think this is our third Spring break book sale,” Galvan said.
She noted the library also has an ongoing book sale located near its periodical section.
Galvan said in addition to donating the book sale proceeds, the Friends also apply for grants on behalf of the library and its programs and conduct membership drives.
Jaqueline Vazquez, young adult specialist at the library, who does programming for teens, spoke about the summer reading program.
“We’re going to be doing a lot of programming for everyone, for the children, teens and adults, so we’ll have a summer kickoff to start things going at the beginning of June, and we’ll put out some more information as we get closer, and that will be held at the county community center,” she said.
“It’ll be a little party, and the kids will be able to pick up their reading logs so they can keep track of the books they read over the summer, and they’ll be getting all sorts of neat incentives, provided by the Friends, to keep them reading,” she added.
“We just want them to keep reading, because the more they read, the more likely they are to retain whatever information they picked up during the school year,” Vazquez said.
The reading program will also offer a wide variety of crafts and other activities for youngsters to keep them busy and interested.
“We’re likely to see thousands of kids over the course of the summer,” Vazquez said.
Galvan said the library’s Facebook page (here) is one place parents can monitor for upcoming events for young people.
“We also have three Facebook group pages, one for each age group. We have Storytime at VVCL for the little ones, Jaqueline has Check Us Out at the VVCL for teens, and I have Shelf Indulgence at the Val Verde County Library for adults,” Galvan said.
“Our mission is to support the library in various functions,” Settle said.
“Our largest expense, though, is the summer reading program, so we do fundraisers and membership drives. We also occasionally partner with local businesses, such as Mesquite Creek Outfitters,” she said.
She pointed out a membership in the Friends of the Val Verde County Library is $10 a year.
“Think about what you spent your last $10 on. I think my last $10 was a tip after a meal. So for $10, you can say that you helped furnish the kids of our community a summer reading program so they don’t have that researched loss of learning over the summer, whether months or weeks. If kids aren’t reading, they’re going to lose ground, and they’re going to lose what they learned. We can’t afford to do that to our kids.
“I’m a former educator, and many of our members are former educators, and so we really support that. It’s a really big deal for us,” Settle said.
Settle said she also participates in the library’s adult programs.
“We know that as adults, if we don’t continue to read, our brains start to lose ground, and there’s research that’s shown that reading helps us fight dementia,” she added.
Settle said the Friends also helped the library with a “1,000 Books Before Kindergarten” program.
“We helped them by providing incentives and sort of the progress reporting that they use, and that’s with parents with young children, to have them read 1,000 books to their children before they ever start kindergarten,” Settle said.
Settle said the Friends help provide funding a program for teens in which “snack packs” are ordered from different countries.
“That gives them the opportunity to try the snacks and learn about another country, another culture,” Settle said.
She said the group is also looking at getting adults back involved back into the library and assists the library with programs like “Coffee And. . . ,” a coffee-and-learning hour featuring talks on subjects of local interest.
“The other adult program the Friends help us with is ‘Crafternoons,’ and those programs sell out every time they’re offered. We’ve done painting with yarn, weaving, bookpage wreaths and at the end of this month we’ll be doing Japanese paper lanterns,” Galvan said.
“We’re really pleased that the programs seem to be bringing people into the library. For us, that’s what this is all about. When you think about what your $10 membership in Friends does for the community, it makes a huge impact,” Settle said.
The writer can be reached at delriomagnoliafan@gmail.com .
