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CUBBERLEY
USED BOOK SALES
Saturday,
February 11
10 am - 4 pm
Main Room opens at 11 am
Sunday,
February 12
1 pm - 4 pm
Main Book Room Sale
In our main room, prices are way below what used book stores charge.
Paperbacks are 50 cents and up, and hardcovers are $1.00 and up. Numbered
tickets for the main room are given out beginning at 8 am on Saturday.
These reserve your place in the line that forms before the 11 am opening.
Each person may pick up one or two tickets.
Children's Books in K6
Room K6 in the K wing (see
map) is entirely filled with children's books
and toys. You'll find picture books,
school age fiction, award winners, non-English titles, and books for parents and teachers,
many for under $1. This room and the bargain room open at 10 am.
Bargain Books in K7
Next door in K7 is the bargain room, where paperbacks
are 50 cents, hardcovers
are $1.00, and children's books are just 25 cents each. Pay just half of that in the bargain room after 12:30 pm on
Saturday and all day on Sunday. On Sunday, you can also buy grocery
bags in the bargain room for $5 and fill them with books.
Featured topics for February:
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Being Affectionate
Healthy Hearts
Hearts in Art
Love and Lovers
Love Songs
Poetry • Romance
Romantic Getaways
Seductive Foods
Strong Marriages
Wild Flings
And various books for the unromantic too!
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4000 Middlefield Road
Palo Alto
Near the northwest end of the Cubberley Community Center
Room
locations
More
information on the sales
Donate
your old books
All proceeds go to help Palo Alto libraries.
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Library
Closes for Presidents' Day |
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All Palo Alto public libraries will be closed on Monday, February 20 for the
Presidents' Day holiday. |
Library Director to
Leave in July |
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Library Director Paula Simpson will be stepping down in July to move to
Seattle with her husband. In the meantime, she'll continue to help the
Library Advisory Commission develop their recommendations for Palo Alto's library system. Simpson came to Palo Alto from the Monterey Public
Library in 2004. Palo Alto Weekly article. |
Non-Profit Book Giveaway |
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Non-profit organizations and schools that need free books should come to the
Bargain Room this month from 4 to 6 pm on Sunday the 12th.
More
information. |
Suggestions? |
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| We're always eager to hear your suggestions for ways to
improve our book sale. Please email them to us at suggestions@friendspaloaltolib.org
or mention them to a volunteer at the sale. |
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| Reference Works for Sale |
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Some spectacular reference works are for sale this month. We have a
1967 through 1989 Bio-Bibliographical Guide to Contemporary Authors with all
147 (!) volumes for $225, although there are no indexes for the final years.
We also have the 1981 New Revision Series of Contemporary Authors in 48
volumes. If you want older biographies, we have a complete 40 volume
Dictionary of National Biography published in 1894 for $500. For more
modern information, try the 1998 Encyclopedia of World Biography in 17
volumes for $50. These large sets are in different locations in the
Main Book room, so please ask a volunteer for assistance. In our
Reference section this month, you'll find tons of dictionaries, including
one from 1930, quotation guides, almanacs, and atlases. |
January Booksale
Not Dampened by Rain |
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| Amazingly, the heavy downpour during our January sale did not stop people
from coming and finding the many great bargains we had. Instead, the
sale raised an incredible $21,801, which is 9% above our previous record back in
August 2005. In fact, January's sale brought in as much as we used to
receive in an entire year back in the mid 1990s. Thanks go to all of
our customers, volunteers, and donors for a fantastic sale. |
You Say Customer, and I Say Visitor |
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Since Palo Alto loves surveys (see two articles below), here's one of our own. Three recent
letters in Palo Alto newspapers have discussed what to call people
who go to the library. "Patron" used to be the standard, but
now other terms are being proposed. We thought you might want to say
what you prefer to be called, so
vote for your favorite by pressing the appropriate button below.
Additional votes
from the same person won't be counted. Results will be reported next
month, but are not intended
to be scientific.
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Library Gets More
Online Books |
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122 more titles have been added to Palo Alto's
collection of online books,
bringing the total to over 800 books, plus 800 more in audio format.
You download these books and then read or listen to them from your home,
office, school, or portable computer. For instance, if you are going
on a trip and bringing a laptop computer, you can download several books
onto your laptop to take with you. One advantage of online books is
that you never need worry about returning them, because they automatically
"expire" on the due date. You also can't lose or damage
them. The online collection includes many fiction titles,
study aids, and books on business, travel, biography, health and fitness,
computers, technology, and self-improvement. |
Volunteers Worked Hard
in 2005 |
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| The booksale takes an enormous effort to run, and we want to thank the
140 or so volunteers who help sort, price, shelve, and sell the quarter
million or so books we handle each year. In 2005, our booksale and
other volunteers worked an amazing 26,557 hours, sometimes during early mornings on their way to work or
late into the evening. |
Much-Awaited Library Survey Results
Released |
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The library released yesterday the results of a $35,000 study of Palo Altans' view of the city's library system.
600 randomly-chosen residents were asked how they used the library, what new
services they'd like to see, and their views on the importance of a central
library versus branches. When asked which opinion of libraries they
most agreed with:
18% felt that the Palo Alto city library facilities are outdated and their collections and
services no longer meet needs,
56% believed that although Palo
Alto residents for the most part are adequately served by their city
library, there is some room for improvement,
17% felt that
Palo Alto is well served by the current library and no changes are required,
and
8% couldn't choose or didn't respond.
The
study was commissioned by the city's Library Advisory Commission as part of
its process to create recommendations for library improvements. The
Godbe Research firm conducted the survey and will present its results at a
special Library Advisory Commission meeting on Thursday, February 9 at 7 pm
at City Hall, 250 Hamilton Avenue.
See the
raw survey results,
Palo Alto Weekly article, and
San Jose Mercury editorial. |
City Services Survey Gives Library
High Marks |
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A separate annual survey from the City Auditor's office asks Palo Altans about all municipal services, including
the library. The 2005 City of Palo Alto Citizen Survey
results were released this week and show that:
• 80% of Palo Altans rate our overall libraries as good or
excellent,
• 75%
feel the variety of library materials is good or excellent, and
• 78% rate our
neighborhood branch libraries as good or excellent.
These
statistics are approximately the same as the year before.
Just 7% of those surveyed rated the neighborhood branch libraries as poor
and only 5% said the overall libraries were poor. Other cities in the
United States that use the same survey also found generally high praise for
libraries. As a result, Palo Alto's high marks for its
libraries overall ranked only in
the 62nd percentile, meaning that libraries in more than a third of the
other cities received higher ratings. However, Palo Alto's ranking
moved up significantly from last year, when it was only in the 40th
percentile. The variety of our library materials also now ranks in the
62nd percentile, up from the 38th percentile last year.
79% of survey participants used the library or its services at least once a
year and 25% visited more than 12 times a year. Non-residents account for 20% of library circulation.
The City Auditor also compared our libraries to how they operated in years
past. For example, the libraries are open 19% fewer hours than five years
ago, while the library budget has kept up approximately with inflation over that period and
the number of staff
has stayed the same. Circulation increased by 31% (partly due to a shorter lending
period) and library visits increased by 20% over that same five year period. For more
information, see the
Auditor's Report and the
Survey Details. |
Upcoming Library Meetings |
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You can learn more about upcoming library issues and proposals at the
following meetings:
February 9: Library Advisory Commission
Special Meeting
to review the library survey results. This and the other Library
Advisory Commission meetings below begin at 7 pm at City Hall, 250 Hamilton Avenue.
February 23: Library Advisory Commission Regular Meeting to discuss
findings and identify "service model elements" for the upcoming
recommendations to the City Council.
March 2: PAGE (Palo Altans for Government Effectiveness)
will continue a public discussion of various library models and their
tradeoffs at 7 pm at the Garden Court Hotel, 520 Cowper Street. This meeting is a
follow-up of one held in early February.
March 9: Library Advisory Commission
Special Meeting with a possible panel of other librarians to discuss trends
and best practices in public libraries. |
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