Dottie Gragg celebrating her **th birthday at the Ventura Friends of the Library warehouse.
by Jill Forman
LIBRARIES OPENING!
As this goes to the publisher, the libraries are opening.
Check with your library staff about rules for masking.
Here’s some official county verbiage about the changes:
Ventura County’s indoor mask order will be lifted February 16, in alignment with the state. Masks are required indoors for unvaccinated people in public places and strongly recommended for all.
Update from Dolly Knight, Ventura Senior Librarian
Despite the closure, library staff has been busy. Furniture has been moved at Foster and Hill Road to make moving books easier, coin receptors replaced for the current copiers, IT working on updates. There have been over 1000 visits to both branches for sidewalk pickups and other library services.
Some programs that have been outside may be moved; check with your librarian.
A customer satisfaction survey indicated that “97% felt they were treated with care at the library.” Heck, we knew that!
Online bookstore sale
In the month of March, all children’s’ books $1! Pickup will be at Foster Bookstore.
New book group at Hill Road
Linda Cherry, Librarian at Hill, is starting a group focusing on children’s books for adults. The group will be called The Wise Owls Book Club (Little Books for Big People), and our first meeting will be in April. Exact date TBD. To be added to the mailing list, find out about forthcoming title selections and meeting dates, email [email protected].
A good place to start, if this interests you, is Why You Should Read Children’s Books Even Though You are So Old and Wise by Katherine Rundell. I know it’s in our library, because Zip Books got it for me.
Ventura Friends of the Library Honors Beloved Volunteer on Her **th Birthday
Dottie Gragg, who has been working with the Friends for well over twenty years, was celebrated by her colleagues at the Friends used book warehouse with a small luncheon on February 10th. Dottie spent her career as a Contract Specialist for the federal government, and on retiring moved to Ventura. She and her friend Phyllis used to put on book sales at Wright Library to make money for the friends, and she is always present at our book sales as a cashier. At the warehouse, she always denies that she is “in charge,” but if we have a question, guess who we go to?
Her warehouse co-workers gave her a scroll declaring that we had made a donation to the Friends in honor of her **th birthday (she prefers not to say but it is a momentous one…)
Read this quote:
“I still find libraries astonishing. I still think they speak to our better instincts. The library remains one of the few places in the world where you don’t have to buy anything, know anyone or believe in anything to enter in. It is our most egalitarian space, and we live in a world in which the problems that threaten to engulf us, surely, have inequality – and the catastrophes that inequality inflicts on men, women and children – at their heart. In these dustbin-fire days, to turn away from the institution feels criminal. If hope is a thing with feathers, then libraries are wings.” Katherine Rundell
