[OPLINLIST] Request for weeded Children's chapter books

[Greenford Community Library]

I’d like to introduce myself and our library.  My name is Raquel
Scheetz (President of the Greenford Public Library Association) and
the Director of our newly reopened Greenford Community Library in
Greenford, Ohio. We are a 44 year old library that was formerly a
branch in the Mahoning county library system. The county decided, for
financial reasons, not to reopen our building after it’s covid closure
because we were very small and rural compared with their other
branches. And that’s ok, I understand and we are moving forward
looking at this as an opportunity not a detriment.
We are now operating on a donation/volunteer model and it has given us
the ability to have more materials, programs and activities for ALL
ages in our branch than were offered before. The townspeople and the
literacy community have been so generous with this undertaking. We
started gathering resources in June and have now been open since the
second week of October.

We were donated 600 boxes of books from libraries in neighboring
counties and we filled the shelves and had lots left over for a book
sale. However 90% of these books were adult fiction/nonfiction. Of the
small percent that were children’s we have garnered a decent
collection of picture books and the “I can read” style books. One area
we are lacking is Children's/Junior chapter books. It seems that these
paperbacks are the hardest to come by in donations from the public or
other organizations because of the demographic they are intended for
and they’re lackadaisical handling.
If you are weeding any of these books please consider contacting me
and possibly we could arrange where I could pay media mail shipping
costs to help fill out our empty spinners in that area. If you would
like I can even provide a link to our catalog so you can see what we
have and don’t.
I have been able to get everything else for our building (shelving,
computers, printers, furniture spinners, materials to protect the
books, etc) without resorting to begging but I’m not above that at
this particular juncture. We have maybe 7 magic tree house volumes,
and the rest of our this collection is dated like “boxcar
children/horrible Harry/girl talk” (1980/90s titles)
Our patrons (close to passing the 100 mark this week!!) would be so
happy to get these types of books in their kids hands!

Note: We intend on purchasing new materials once we have received
donations over our annual operating budget and are in the process of
joining SEO. When I have learned how to properly apply for grants I
hope to get some funds allocated specifically for this.  I am
literally a farmer/mom with a little bit of marketing experience who
has spearheaded this project with a small group of similar residents.
Every step has been a learning experience and grant writing will be my
next lesson….
Because of the Ohio laws our library does not have the ability to
receive public library funds or even place a tax levy in our township
because we were not in existence prior to 1968 and 1942 respectively.
Included some photos of our wonderful volunteer's hard work!


Raquel Scheetz
President, Director
Greenford Public Library Association
330.398.0131

Greenford Community Library
7441 South Range Road
Salem, Ohio 44460
PO BOX 98
Greenford, OH 44422
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: image1.jpeg
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 191820 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://lists.oplin.org/pipermail/oplinlist/attachments/20231102/f87b05d4/attachment-0002.jpeg>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: image2.jpeg
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 171782 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://lists.oplin.org/pipermail/oplinlist/attachments/20231102/f87b05d4/attachment-0003.jpeg>