NY Librarian LaunchesHer Own African Library Project
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By Lauren Barack -- School Library Journal, 03/15/2010
Reading Masha Hamilton’s The Camel Bookmobile (HarperCollins, 2007) got Junene Hrycko thinking about caravans, Africa, and yes, books.
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Librarian Junene Hrycko inspired her patrons to donate and deliver books to Africa. |
“The camel can get sickly, which can be a burden then to the people we’re trying to reach,” says Hrycko, the head of circulation at Mount Kisco Public Library. “But we found some guidelines for a book drive through the project, and they connected us to a school in Swaziland.”
And so launched the library’s own African Library Project, which brought Mount Kisco’s patrons together to raise 1,000 books last month. Hrycko and library director Susan Riley pushed the word out through newsletters, presentations at public schools, and chats with patrons during the course of the day. The result? The community collected 13,000 books.
“People got pretty excited,” admits Hrycko.
But then Mount Kisco is a community devoted to its library. The Village of Mount Kisco passed an $8 million bond measure a few years ago for a new 18,000-square-foot space, which opened last fall—just in time to serve as the headquarters for the project. Besides bringing in books from their own shelves, the community bought new titles, and also donated funds, which covered shipping costs to New Orleans, where they then boarded a ship for Africa. However, costing $500 for every 1,000 books sent, Hrycko and Riley had some concern over how they would raise enough to send all 13,000 copies.
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The books were divided among two African schools. |
While some volumes went to a local school in Mount Kisco, others were sold to offset shipping costs. About $1,300 has been collected so far, says Riley, with more funds coming in daily, including a matching offer of 50 cents for every $1 the library raises. Hrycko says whatever the library brings in beyond the shipping fees will be donated to the African Library Project itself.
After such success, the hope is to repeat the program next year, but that will depend on whether the library can beef up its own staffing, says Riley, who was forced to lay off people when the branch moved into a temporary spot, as the town built the new library space over the past two years. Now, they’re short-handed, she says, although hopeful Mount Kisco will increase the library’s budget so they can hire additional librarians for the coming year.
“Between writing up newsletters, going through the materials, and boxing up books, even with the number of good volunteers we had, the project took a toll on our staff,” she says. “But we would love to repeat this.”
