Hats off to our dependable volunteers, faithful customers, and generous donors!  The Friends Bookstore--which has been compared to a "museum gift shop" is staffed by volunteers for an incredible 56 hours a week, and is turning over a nice profit!   

 

Special Week-end Sales and Online Sales have exceeded expectations both in profit and volunteer support.

 

At the June meeting, the Friends' Board approved a gift of $40,000 for new books and children's' programs for coming year. We could not have done this without all of your help.  Many, many thanks to our wonderful and supportive community!

  

The next 'Friends of the Library' booksale will be on Saturday, July 9th. This one-day sale will start at 10:00 am.  This will all for 4 hours of the regular sale followed by a half hour 'lunch break' and will conclude with the two hour bag sale from 3:00 to 5:00 pm

  

All proceeds are donated to the Walnut Creek Library for new books and children's programs  

 

Sorters and bookstore volunteers, please be watchful for books that may belong to other libraries.  Any book with library markings that has not been marked "Discard" or "Withdrawn" should be passed on to Cindy Brittain.

 

This has become a costly issue with the highly used automated interlibrary loan service, Link+. Sometimes materials are returned without paperwork and could be construed as donations.  Lending libraries charge borrowers over $100 to replace a book lost in interlibrary loan. Your watchful eyes could prevent a costly fine. Cindy Brittain and library staff thank you!

 

  

Patron visits:

Our daily number of patron visits at WCL  is staying around 1500 a day.

Jan - 1510

Feb - 1493

Mar - 1438

Apr - 1465

 

The East door is used more than twice as much as the second most used door - the Park Entry. The two elevator entrances are next, then the Broadway entrance, and then the Cafe. It will be interesting to see how much use the Cafe entrance gets when it is open. Right now you can't even get in that way - you can only leave that way.

 

Circulation:

WCL is consistently the library with the highest circulation each month.  Daily averages are:

Jan - 1862 checkouts per day

Feb - 1854 checkouts per day

Mar - 1731 checkouts per day

 

Computer Usage:

17,548 hours of use from Jan-April 2011

 

Group Study Room Usage:

1043 group study room bookings from Jan-April 2011

The Friends of the Library for local libraries was highlighted in the Contra Costa Times on April 20th with a wonderful story by Deborah Burstyn.  Some highlights from the article about the Walnut Creek Friends book sales are listed below:

 

Walnut Creek Friends of the Library board member Bob Brittain recently stated in a newsletter, "The Friends are a major source of new materials for the new downtown library in Walnut Creek. The county's budget for library collection development may be reduced by 28 percent in the next fiscal year, meaning a cumulative 56 percent reduction in the last three years. Our Friends of the Library help fill the gap."

 

As their local libraries' financial pictures darken, Friends of the Library bookstores are upping their game with online sales. Literally turning trash to treasure, sorters now trawl through the piles of donated books to cull those that are antique, rare or otherwise valuable to sell through popular Internet sites. Orinda's shop prefers Amazon; Lafayette volunteers use eBay and Walnut Creek's Friends sell through a site called Alibris that caters to book collectors.

 

In the bookstore donation room at Walnut Creek, manager Deb Wainscott carefully lifts the delicate vellum pages covering the engraved illustrations of a copy of Longfellow's epic Louisiana poem "Evangeline." The flyleaf lists its publication date as 1893. "It has a bit of wear on it so I am going to list it for $23," she said. "We have a five-star rating on Alibris so people are saying we're doing the right thing and they like what they're buying from us."