Thank You Book Sale Volunteers!

The Annual Friends of Brown Library Book Sale took place over the weekend of January 20 - 22nd, 2012 at the Civic Center in Washington NC.   We would like to THANK the many volunteers who came out to help make this event an enormous success.  Many of our volunteers spent the better part of the week with us lifting boxes, unpacking and organizing books; alphabetically, by genre, by title!    

Raul & Team Transported The Books

The books are donated by the community throughout the year.  Our Friends help to organize the books before they are put in storage until the book sale.  Raul and his team transported the books from the storage unit to the Civic Center in several truck loads.

Volunteers Worked Tirelessly Over TWO Days 

Our volunteers began at 8:30 AM Tuesday moving boxes and beginning to sort and unpack books.  

Volunteer & Friend of The Brown Library, Sue Fish. 

By Wednesday at 5pm the room was pretty much complete! As you can see below this was no small feat.

Amazing isn't it?
20 Thousand books set up in TWO days.

 

Taaa Daaa!  Ready To Open the Sale To The Public

On Thursday night the doors were open for a couple of hours to allow the Friends of The Brown Library MEMBERS to shop pre-sale ... this is an amazing perk of membership!

Nancy Nash, our book sale founder, is all set to greet & check out buyers.

We could NOT offer this book sale without our volunteers.  The Friends of the Brown Library are so appreciative of the support of our community and the enthusiasm and hard work of the volunteers.  This weekend is the ultimate proof in a belief in the good of our Library and its programs.  


THANK YOU to all volunteers and to the community who join us each year to buy used books to benefit The Friends of Brown Library Programs.

Bargains for the Book Bunch

By Vail Stewart Rumley

Bargains for the book bunch

Published 12:32am Friday, January 20, 2012

Email    Comments

Spread across the Washington Civic Center floor, it’s a sea of books, table after table of hardcover books—art, history, biography galore. Tucked in odd places, on the stage and under tables are boxes of quality paperbacks—suspense, romance, mystery, chick-lit. Some are shiny new, some are gently used, but all the books at this sale have price tags just a fraction of their original cost.

Quality paperback books sell for $1 at the Friends of the Library annual book sale. Over 25,000 books were donated to help raise funds for the Brown Library. The event runs today and Saturday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Sunday from noon to 3 p.m. (WDN Photo/Vail Stewart Rumley)

A favorite of local bibliophiles, the Friends of the Brown Library annual book sale takes place today through Sunday at the Washington Civic Center. From 9 a.m. until 5 p.m. Friday and Saturday, and noon to 3 p.m. on Sunday, book lovers can browse through over 25,000 book titles donated specifically for the sale to raise funds to support the library.

“This is an event we look forward to every year,” said Washington resident Carol Smith.

Smith and her sister, Jean Williams, who lives in Swan Quarter, make a yearly date to attend the book sale together.

“We can hardly wait for it,” said Williams.

Thursday, Smith and Williams attended the Friends of the Brown Library Member’s Night, an opening event in which members of the organization get a sneak preview, and first dibs, on this year’s crop of books.

At 5:30 p.m., a line stretched out the door of the Civic Center as members waited to get in and start searching through the tables. A few patrons searched for specific titles from lists, others simply browsed. Some loaded books into sturdy bags brought from home, others made do with the plastic ones supplied by the Friends of the Brown Library.

“The quality of the donations has increased,” said Rachel Victoria Mills, one of the event’s organizers. “We have beautiful children’s books—we have whole sets. And the selection of quality paperbacks is wonderful.”

New quality paperbacks will cost anywhere between $10 and $20, but at this three day sale, the list price is $1.

Children’s books are $.25, and quality children’s books are $2.

In addition to books, the sale feature LPs, cassette tapes, videos, CDs, DVDs, and audio books.

To get it all there is a two-day affair of volunteerism.

“We had over 1300 boxes, averaging 20 books a box,” said Katie Lake, a Friend of the Brown Library and one of the organizers of the sale.

Volunteer Walt Warren orchestrated moving the books from the Coastal Mini-storage unit to the Civic Center, a task that took 10 trucks. Ginny Warren organized the sorting of the thousands of books into genres, then alphabetically.

“We could never, ever do this without the volunteers who come back year after year,” said Mills.

Friends of the Brown Library uses this annual sale to provide funds in addition to those allotted in the city-owned library’s annual budget. The proceeds are used throughout the year for new technology, special programming, and basic supplies the library might otherwise have to do without.

In addition to the Friday and Saturday event hours, Sunday is “Fill-Our-Bags for $5” day, where patrons can fill a provided bag with any of remaining books.

THANKS To:

 Vail Stewart Rumley

FOR WRITING SUCH A GREAT ARTICLE! 

A little linky love right HERE!

New Beginnings at the Library

New beginnings at the library

Published 12:10am Friday, January 13, 2012

Email    Comments

January is the time for new beginnings and resolutions, so don’t let the post-holiday blues stand in your way.

Vowed to lose a few pounds this year? Stop by the library and check out a healthful cookbook or research the newest diet craze. Want to redecorate a room for spring? The library has plenty of interior-design books to help you. Whether it’s planting a garden, starting a new hobby or promising to read more classics this year, Brown Library can help you find the perfect book to get you going.

It’s finally here: The Friends of the Brown Library annual winter book sale. Every year, that organization hosts one of the biggest and best book sales in North Carolina. All proceeds help support the library, bringing you new materials and programs throughout the year. If you’re not a member already, there’s still some time left to sign up. As always, you can sign up at the door during the sale. Becoming a member of the group allows you access to the members’ exclusive sale night from 5:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. Jan. 19. The sale is open to the public, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Jan. 20 and Jan. 21. On Jan. 22, from noon to 3 p.m., books will be sold by the bag.

Jan. 23 marks the beginning of the Chinese New Year, and this year is the Year of the Dragon. To celebrate, our teen section will be hosting a display featuring information about Chinese New Year and offer books with dragons as central characters to all ages. Whether you love the classic “Dragonriders of Pern” or the young-adult sensation “Eragon,” there’s sure to be a beastly tale suited for everyone.

The teen section’s lounge area has a new, colorful rug, thanks to the Friends of the Brown Library.

We welcome a new employee, Pamela Johnson, to the library family.

Brown Library will be closed Monday in observance of Martin Luther King Jr. Day. It reopens Tuesday under normal operating hours.

Brown Library is open from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Mondays through Fridays, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturdays and from 1 p.m. to 6 p.m. Sundays.

Be sure to bookmark our blog on your computers as your resource for news and events happening at Brown Library: http://brownsbookshelf.blogspot.com.

If you haven’t already done so, make sure you come by and get the smartest card you’ll ever have: a library card.

Elizabeth Tankard is a part-time library assistant at the Brown Library — etankard@washingtonnc.gov.

A little Linky LOVE: Check Out THIS article from the Washington NC Daily News Site!