From April 15 through today, the Delaware County District joined the rest of the nation in celebrating National Volunteer Week. Volunteers are a critical part of some of the work we do at the library.
In 2017 alone, we had 34 regular adult volunteers who gave 1,275 hours of their time over the course of the year. Each year, the Independent Sector releases the value of a volunteer’s time. Put into last year’s average, our volunteers worked the equivalent of nearly $30,000.
Library volunteers help decorate, prepare for programs for all ages, staff community concerts and events, promote the library, digitize library resources, process and check on book inventory, clean and much more!
Beyond our adult volunteers, we have a robust “volunteen” program for students looking for community service opportunities and ways to give back to the local community, while also gaining real world experience for their resumes.
We see most of these teens over the summer months while they help out with our Summer Reading Club events and activities. Last year, 747 teens donated more than 3,500 hours to the library! You’ll see the teens again this summer at family programs like Zak Morgan music, Erica Carlson magic and the Turtle Lady.
The volunteer program would not be what it is today without the help of the library’s volunteer supervisor, Julie Miller, and teen librarians, Mandy Henning and Becky Woodruff. This National Volunteer Week, we extend a special thanks and appreciation to those who give their time to all local nonprofits and agencies.
Books to consider picking up on your next stop at the library:
• “The Sandman” by Lars Kepler. Two brilliant police agents must hold fast to their sanity to beat a manipulative serial killer at his own game and rescue a girl who went missing thirteen years earlier.
• “Sirens” by Joseph Knox. An emotionally damaged Manchester detective takes an undercover assignment to rescue a politician’s runaway daughter, who has developed an association with a brilliant and lethal drug lord.
• “The Innocent Wife” by Amy Lloyd. Falling in love with a man on Death Row she believes was falsely accused, a young schoolteacher successfully campaigns for the man’s release and becomes his wife only to begin wondering about his possible guilt in the aftermath of his release.
• “Chicago” by David Mamet. A novel set against the backdrop of the 1920s Chicago mob scene follows the experiences of a World War I veteran who seeks vigilante justice against the man responsible for killing the woman he loved.
• “Barbed Wire Heart” by Tess Sharpe. In upstate New York near the Canadian border, Harley McKenna has had to work for her North Country-criminal father since she was sixteen, and as she is trying to decide whether to stay in the family business or get out, her family’s biggest rivals, the Springfields, come gunning for her.
