Quarterly Newsletter

September 2018 

 

Greetings and Salutations!

 

 

I would like to bring you up-to-date on some items that I thought might interest you with regard to the Friends of the Jacksonville Public Library Store.

 

We continue to refine our shelving of non-fiction into sub-categories (for example:  Men’s Health, Women’s Health, Pregnancy, etc. within the larger category of Health).  We are doing this for the express purpose of helping you find the book(s) easier that you are looking for. 

 

Also, while we are in the process of refining what is going where, we are paying more attention to the copyright dates of books, where it makes sense to do so.  Two examples:  a book on visiting Orlando that has a copyright of 2014 or earlier, simply does not belong on the shelf as it is clearly outdated.  Ditto for exam self-help books (SAT, ACT, etc.) that are more than two years old.

 

We have seen a significant decrease of the disappearance what we call Section Books, i.e., those books wrapped in bright orange paper with the sub-section labels on them.  Thanks for not placing them in your bags during our bag sales.  While the numbers of books disappearing has gone down significantly, we are now finding that people are doing their best to open them (they are wrapped rather well in shipping tape), and that necessitates the remaking of the section books. Trust me, we purposely use books that are being discarded for various reasons, and that particular book has absolutely nothing to do with the section it is identifying.

 

We have seen a significant increase of donations of music CDs and movie DVDs.  We are working hard to get them on the shelves to give you the most selection possible.  I have received a lot of concerns from many of you that during our last two bag sales, there were virtually no movie DVDs available for sale, and why?  The answer to that is simple.  During the first few minutes of members only night, a few individuals came in and literally took entire shelves of DVDs without even looking at the titles of them.  (These individuals even took the “A”. “B”, “C”, the  dividers we use to help us keep them alphabetized!)   I can only assume they are planning on reselling them.  I am open to suggestions as to how to better meet the needs of all of our members and non-members who would like to select some DVDs for their personal enjoyment.  Please let me know; I want to hear your ideas.

 

We have now created a section of fiction LARGE PRINT books at the suggestion of many of you.  These books can be found shelved following the letter “Z” in the rear store.  I was pleasantly surprised to find how many of these large print books found good homes since this section was created.  Thanks for your suggestion to all who asked us to do this.

 

Volunteering at FJPL.  If you love books, may I suggest that you give serious consideration to becoming a FJPL volunteer?  Can you come for a few hours on a Tuesday, Thursday or Saturday, or maybe a few days a month?  Please don’t think that you are making a long-term commitment of “X” hours a month.  We welcome both short and long term volunteers that have found some time to work it into their schedule.  If you need more information, ask any currently serving volunteer.  I’d be willing to bet that in addition to answering any questions you might have, they will tell you how much fun and even educational it is to volunteer here.  As they say on one TV show:  “Come on down!”

 

One more item before I close, and that is probably the easiest way you can help support us, and you don’t even have to leave your house to do it.  The Friends of the Jacksonville Public Library is a registered 501(c)(3) on Amazon Smile. When you make your Amazon purchases through smile.Amazon.com and make Friends of the Jacksonville Public Library Inc. your charity of choice, Amazon will donate a portion of the sales to us! You shop like normal and Amazon gives!

 

 

 

 

Mike Steve

VP, FJPL