We Get By With a Little Help From Our Friends (Of the Berryville Library)

If you’ve been following our blog for any length of time or are a resident of Carroll County, you likely know about our quest to raise money for a new library building. Whenever people ask us what they can do to help, donating to our Berryville Library Building Project fund probably comes to mind first. And, of course, that’s a fantastic way to help. But if you really want to help, we ask that you also join the Friends of the Berryville Library.

This week is National Friends of Libraries Week. Friends groups are indispensable allies for libraries everywhere, but our Friends group is particularly important to us because it has been one of the driving forces in helping us reach our goal of building a new library.

Thank you, thank you, thank you!

As we’ve done the past two summers, we hosted a fundraising/reading summer challenge--every hour read equals a dollar for the building fund. Except this year was our boldest challenge yet–25,000 hours for $25,000 in just 8 weeks. How’d we do?!

Want To Help The Library Raise $25,000 This Summer?

Summer is soon upon us, which means it’s time for our annual summer program, as well for some new recent additions to our summer traditions at the library–a summer reading challenge and a storywalk!

Library Giving Week 2022–Help Us Raise $20,000 For A New Library!

About this time last year, we kicked off our fundraising campaign for a desperately needed new library building. In just one year, we’ve already raised over $1,000,000, an astonishing fundraising feat that we are incredibly thankful for.

But the work is not over! We still need to raise another $1,500,000 to build the 10,000-square-foot building that would allow us the space we need for our collection and programming needs.

Last year, we were able to raise $20,000 for the campaign in honor of Library Giving Day, and we’re hoping to do the same thing–or even better–for Library Giving Day (April 6) this year. In fact, we’re stretching it out to be a Library Giving Week, April 3 to 10. 🙂

Help Us Spread Christmas Cheer and Raise $10,000 for the Library!

Thanks to two Secret Santas, there will be cheer for you, cheer for me, and cheer for the library this holiday season.

All you have to do is watch Christmas movies and/or do acts of kindness. In exchange, you’ll raise money for our building project and accrue OOPS credit, which you can use for library fines or bank to pay for copies and faxes.

Interested? Read on!

Everyone Needs a Little Help from Their Friends!

I’ve often written on here about the importance of Friends of the Library groups, in particularly our own hard-working Friends of the Berryville Library, Inc. And that importance can’t be overstated now, especially since we launched our fundraising campaign for a new library facility six months ago.

We’ve raised an amazing amount of money in that time (nearly $985,000–39% of our goal), and we have continued to grow our Friends membership to a record 175 people.

Updates!

I’ve had a couple of exciting updates on the library that I’ve wanted to post, and I figured that now is the time to post both of them!

If you’re a regular reader and/or a resident of Berryville, you probably know that we launched our fundraising campaign for a new library building 5 months ago today and that we also had a reading challenge to raise additional money this summer.

Read ahead for updates on both projects!

Want to Help Us Raise $15,000 for a New Library This Summer?

Hey, everybody, it’s summer, which means it’s time for, well, summery things, like the library’s summer reading program. 🙂

Last summer, we had a blast with our reading challenge through Beanstack, pandemic be darned. We also raised over $15,000, well ahead of our $10,000 goal. Since then, we’ve had a few more challenges, including for watching movies and just donating in general, and we are always so pleased and humbled by the enthusiastic response we receive.

And thanks to the Squires family and their generosity, we can do this again this summer. They will be matching a dollar for every hour read between June 7 and July 30, as long as we hit the goal of 15,000 hours.

Want to participate? Of course you do! Keep reading to find out how.

Lots of Exciting News at the Berryville Public Library . . . No Foolin’!

Yesterday (April 1) at 2 p.m., the Berryville Public Library hosted a press conference outside the building to make several significant announcements. It may have been April Fool’s Day, but we weren’t fooling, and we were so excited to share our good news with our community!

So, what is the big news?

Miracle on Spring Street Christmas Movie Challenge

Love watching Christmas movies? Love the library? Want to help us raise $5,000 for the library during the holidays? You can watch movies and help the library with our Miracle on Spring Street Christmas Movie Challenge. 😀