Saturday
January 10

9 am - 12:30 pm
Bargain Room Sale
Start your morning here, with some incredible bargains.  All children's books are just 25 cents each, paperbacks are 50 cents, and hardcovers are $1.00.  See the map for the exact location of the room.

11 am - 4 pm
Regular Sale
You'll find books on every topic in the world among the 40,000 items in our regular book room, with prices way below what used book stores charge.  Paperbacks are 50 cents and up, and hardcovers are $1.00 and up.  

12:30 pm - 2 pm
Bargain Room Half Price Sale
During the middle of the day, all books in room E5 are half-priced.  Be sure to come over after you visit the regular sale.

2 pm - 4 pm
Bargain Room $5 a Bag Sale
After 2 pm, all books in E5 are sold by the bag.  You can fill as many grocery bags as you want at $5 each.  We supply the grocery bags.

Featured sales books for January include: 

4000 Middlefield Road, Palo Alto
Near the northwest end of the Cubberley Community Center

Room location

All proceeds go to help Palo Alto libraries.

If you've ever come to the booksale before 11 am, you know how long the pre-opening line to our main booksale room gets.  Some people arrive hours early just to be sure to have a good spot.  To ease this problem, we handed out numbered tickets last month at the door to the sale room so that you could go off to the bargain book sale room or elsewhere and then return a little before 11 am to claim your place in line.  That was very successful, so we'll being doing the same this time.  Tickets will be available beginning at 8 am at the main book sale room on the morning of the sale until about 10:45 am.  If you arrive after that, please just enter the line directly.

It's going to happen .. but not quite yet.  We are still working with the City of Palo Alto on the schedule for moving the book sale from the E wing into the two new rooms in the K wing.  This month's bargain book sale will still be in the old E5 room, but we'll have more news for you next month.

The Friends of the Palo Alto Library, in conjunction with all nine public libraries in Palo Alto, East Palo Alto, Menlo Park, and Atherton, will be improving Internet access at the libraries and providing a spectacular set of new online resources for free to all who have or obtain a Palo Alto library card, thanks to a major Cable Co-op Legacy Grant.  Approximately $333,000 is slated to add new Internet workstations in the library buildings, upgrade wiring, allow more laptop users to connect to power and to the Internet within the library, provide loaner laptops at the Palo Alto Main and Mitchell Park libraries, purchase new color and black and white printers, offer Internet and other tutoring at Belle Haven, and establish many other improvements.  Another $69,000 will be used to offer at least two years of Internet-based resources from any computer at any hour, not just from within a library.  This will include approximately 150 years of the New York Times, fully searchable, beginning with the very first issue.  The Friends are enormously excited about this opportunity to serve everyone in our local communities and pleased to have spearheaded the grant effort.  See also a December 12 Palo Alto Weekly article, our thank yous, and the Cable Co-op press release.  Here's how the funds will be dispersed by library:

The Children's Library Expansion and Repair project is excited to have met its 2003 goal of raising $1.1 million.  Starting with an anonymous donation of $150,000 to the Friends of the Palo Alto Library in early 2003, and a pledge of $200,000 more in matching funds, the Friends, the Palo Alto Library Foundation, the Library Advisory Commission, and the City of Palo Alto raised the remaining $750,000 from community donations.  Meanwhile, the City of Palo Alto will supply $1.2 million of its own so that construction can begin in 2005.  However, the project now needs to raise $200,000 for furniture, fixtures, and equipment for the expanded and remodeled library.  Your donation can help this effort.  See the recent San Jose Mercury article, pictures of the expansion, pictures of the September 14 kickoff party, and an early Palo Alto Weekly article.

As elected at last year's annual meeting, our new officers for this year are:
  President: Jeff Levinsky
  Vice President: Wendy Akers-Ghose
  Secretary: Martha Schmidt
  Treasurer: Joe Shakes
  Assistant Treasurer (continuing): Bob Otnes
We also have a new board member: Patricia Sohl.  We want to thank very much our outgoing president Ellen Wyman for an extraordinary year of service.  Ellen will continue to serve on our board of directors and as President Emeritus.  We also wish to thank departing board members John Burt and Shelby Valentine for their enormous contributions to our libraries and to the Friends.

Many people purchased the wonderful "giving tree" ornaments from Palo Alto's Borel Bank & Trust Co. on 245 Lytton Ave. in December, raising $815 for the Friends.  Our thanks to all who participated and especially to Yohko Fick and the entire staff of Borel Bank for this wonderful holiday treat for our local libraries.