A reader’s opinion: Still a role for Friends

To the editor:

Let me introduce myself to anyone who does not already know me. My name is Connie Nourse. I was the chairman of the committee that set up the Friends of the Library at the request of the Wake Forest Town Commissioners. Then at the initial meeting of the Friends group at the old library building on South White Street, I was elected as the first president of the Friends and then was elected for one more term of office two years later.

The Friends of the Wake Forest Public Library, Inc. got its start from a small article in The Wake Weekly announcing that on such-and-such date, the head of the county library system and other important county officials would be glad to meet with citizens to hear their comments and requests about what they would like in the new branch library to be built in Wake Forest. So I attended.

Various people had requests to make, including myself. But every request was turned down, with the excuse, “We just don’t have enough money to do that.” We also learned that the architectural design for the new library was already finalized and could not be altered according to constituents’ requests.

Finally, in response to everyone’s frustration that all suggestions had been rejected, I put my hand up again. When I was recognized to speak, I said, “It sounds to me like what is really needed here is a friends of the library organization that would raise money to meet some of the wishes expressed by members of the community that you officials have said you cannot afford to fund.”

The officials reacted in horror, as if a poisonous snake had just been let loose in the room. One of them snapped at me, “I’d certainly hate to see a bake sale going on down at the street corner every weekend with a sign announcing it was raising money for the library.” I snapped right back at him, “So would I.  Do you have any idea how much time it would take to organize a large group of volunteers to do that much baking and to staff a sales table on a regular basis every weekend?”

There were several members of the town board of commissioners attending, just to hear what was going on at the meeting. At their next official meeting, there was comment and discussion about the meeting that had taken place, and the town board voted (unanimously, as I recall) that it would be a good thing to have a friends of the library group devoted exclusively to the Wake Forest branch. They agreed that they would ask the town clerk to accept names of the public who were interested in forming such a group. The Wake Weekly published information about this in their next edition. The other task the group was to accomplish was to design a plaque dedicated to Mr. Miller, whose bequest in his will had enabled the new library to be built with 5,000 sq. feet of space instead of only 4,000 sq. feet as originally planned.

A time and place were set for the interested people to hold their initial meeting about forming a friends of the library group. They nominated and unanimously elected me to be the chairman of the committee. We met once a month and settled assignments about who should do what, either alone or together with another member of the committee. The planning committee met for a year to get all details ironed out so that the initial public meeting could be held.

The library’s first priority was new books that would be permanent for the collection.  At that time, all books that were borrowed from our collection which were borrowed by a patron at another branch were returned to our branch by the library’s courier system. The library manager identified children’s books as the first priority of books needed. She made up the list of books she wanted, and we gave her a budget of how much we could afford to spend. We made no effort to dictate to her what books she should buy. It was that issue that broke up the old county-wide Friends of the Library group. The library designed a special book plate to be pasted into every book bought with money raised by the Wake Forest Friends of the Library.

We started the book sale in our first year.  We held it in the springtime, usually in May, so we would not come in conflict with the time of year when the county held their annual book sale that had been started by the original county-wide Friends of the Library. Initially, the sale was held on the third Saturday of May.  Later, that was changed to the first Saturday in May when the Friends were able to use an empty store in the shopping center that now holds the Town’s Renaissance Center. Thus they tied in with Meet in the Street, and people who parked in that parking lot could buy whatever they wanted and carry them straight to their car and then go to Meet in the Street. When that location was no longer available, the group got permission to use the Senior Center. They were allowed to come set up the books the evening before the sale as long as everything was cleaned up and tidied up after the sale was over.

I have heard that the buying of books for the library was discontinued when the books became part of the collection of whatever branch they were returned to.  So then the money earned by the book sale went into buying some new furnishings for the library for the teen section.

For years, the Friends sponsored an enlarged program of high school student interns who helped out with work at the library such as re-shelving returned books and any other duties the library manager assigned. The Friends’ participation in this allowed the student intern program to be a year-round operation instead of just in the summer. The Friends sponsored an end of session pizza party at the library for all the students who had just served their internship. We also paid for special T-shirts for them that matched the ones the county and one major donor paid for in the summer term. Is the current Friends Group still doing this?

The enlarged Wake Forest branch is #2 on the priority list of construction projects for the county library system. The money could be held over for a year or two to help with furnishing the expansion of the Wake Forest branch, whenever its turn comes.

In the meanwhile, the Friends of the Library still needs to be putting on programs as often as they have done in the past. There is no reason to cede that role to the Wakefield branch. They serve their part of North Raleigh.  The Wake Forest branch serves the Wake Forest community, which now has a little over 30,000 people within town limits and is the 29th largest city in North Carolina.

And of course it serves people like me, who live in the 27587 ZIP code but not within town limits. It serves many children who are home-schooled in this ZIP code. I made a study of that back in about 1998 for the library. At that time, there were about 650 different approved home school units in this ZIP code alone. That’s a lot of children who do not have a school library, and need to use the public library for research on their projects, or reading books for book reports, etc. Not everything can be done by a simple Google search!

I do encourage the current officers of the Friends of the Library to do everything possible to stay together as a group and to become an active group again.  When I sent in my dues, I offered to come back on the board, if asked, to help out as a director.  I no longer have the health needed for an officer position.

Please let me know if I can be of any assistance to the Friends of the Library.

Sincerely,

Connie Nourse (Mrs. Hugh Nourse)