Annual book sale gives library boost

WEST SPRINGFIELD - Readers who want to save money and be "green" at the same time will want to stop by the West Springfield Public Library on Friday or Saturday for the fall used-book sale.

It runs from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. each day.

The Friends of the West Springfield Public Library, which holds the sale in the Youth Department's picture book room each fall and spring, has been "recycling" books this way for years. The bargains offered always attract customers - including a number of used-book dealers who later resell the books at higher prices.

Fiction, non-fiction, video tapes and children's books, all in very good condition, will be sold. Most hardcover books are priced at $1, although some oversized or more valuable volumes are $2. Most paperbacks sell for 50 cents each.

Everyone wins: buyers get great bargains; the friends' organization makes money which is then used to help support the library, particularly the summer youth reading program; and the books go to new homes instead of to a landfill.

The book sales are a major source of funds for the group. And raising funds for the library has never been more critical, said Rosemary Bunnell, friends' president. At the same time that state and local budgets are being cut, more and more people are turning to the library for the free or low-cost services it provides.

In coming months, Bunnell said, the Friends of the West Springfield Public Library will study the library's recently completed five-year strategic plan to determine how the group can help the library meet its goals.

The goals include meeting changing community needs; maintaining the library property to make it warm, welcoming, convenient and accessible; establishing higher visibility in the community through marketing and communications; continuing to attract and retain quality staff; and seeking creative opportunities for funding.

The strategic plan set six service priorities, based in part on a community survey about what a library should do: to help people connect to the online world; to create young readers; to foster reading and writing skills in children and adults; to help people make career choices; to provide a comfortable place for people to visit; and to welcome immigrants to the U.S. The plan sets out specific objectives and activities for each.

Parts of the friends' role is also to increase cultural opportunities in the community. Toward that end, Bunnell said, the group will underwrite a new, free series of programs.

Called "Music Sandwiched In," the program, scheduled for January through April, will feature live music performances every other Friday in the library's reading area, from noon to 1 p.m. Listeners may bring a lunch.

Reference librarian Anna Popp, who came up with the idea for the musical noon-times, has begun putting together a schedule of performers, and expects to have it completed by the end of November. Musicians and dates will be posted at the library and on the library's Web site, www.wspl.org. "We are looking at an eclectic group of performers - local and not-so-local, young, old - who will appeal to a mature audience, 40 and older," Popp said.

Among the musicians already signed up for the series are Fumito Nunoya, a highly acclaimed international marimbist, and Too Human, an acoustic duo from Ludlow who perform along the entire Eastern seaboard, playing jazz standards.

Performance dates will be Jan. 15 and 29, Feb. 12 and 26, March 12 and 26 and April 9 and 23.

Library Director Antonia Golinski-Foisy said the library will be aided in its effort to encourage young people to read by a new $20,000 federal grant for "Tweens and Teens." Youth services librarian Teresa Mitus wrote the grant proposal. The funds were approved for this fiscal year and the following year. Friends of the West Springfield Library is a volunteer group created in 1990 to promote and aid the library and its programs. New members are always welcome. To join, leave a message for Donna St. John at (413) 736-4561, ext. 7. Submitted by the Friends of the West Springfield Public Library