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CUBBERLEY
USED BOOK SALES
Saturday
November 11
10 am - 4 pm
Main Room opens at 11 am
Sunday
November 12
1 pm - 4 pm
Featured topics for
November:
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Biographies • Christmas Crafts
Classics • Cooking • Dinosaurs
Fiction • Flying
Foreign Language
Military History
Naval Historical Fiction
Political Science • Postcards
And over 50,000 other items
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4000 Middlefield Road
Palo Alto
Northwest corner of the Cubberley Community Center
Map
More information on the sales
Donate your old books
All proceeds go to help Palo Alto libraries.
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 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
on Saturday.
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.
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Another Way to Enjoy the Booksale |
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If you enjoy the booksale and want to help raise more funds for Palo Alto libraries, consider volunteering.
Many of our volunteers aren't even from Palo Alto, but just enjoy the energy
and camaraderie of the sale. Plus, there are free refreshments and other
perks.
You needn't volunteer during the sale weekend itself. Instead, you can
come at any convenient time for you throughout each month to organize and price books
behind-the-scenes in our three rooms. This is a wonderful way to utilize some
of your experience in various fields and with books. You'll also enjoy
meeting and working alongside all our wonderful book-loving volunteers.
For more information, please call (650) 213-8755 or (650) 325-9483. |
Support the Libraries by Holiday Shopping |
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If you can't find something at our booksale and end up buying it at Amazon.com,
you can still help our libraries. Just start your Amazon sessions by
clicking here or on the Amazon link on the top
right of any of our web pages at
www.friendspaloaltolib.org.
Amazon will donate a percentage of your purchases to us, which we give to the library.
You pay no surcharge! It's a free way to help our libraries. |
Palo Alto Baby Boomers Like Libraries |
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Because 80% of Palo Alto baby boomers indicate they don't want to move away as
they age, the city expects to become an "older" town, with those over 55
constituting some 40% of the population. To determine the interest and
needs of local baby boomers, who are those born between 1946 and 1964, the
city's Community Services Department recently ran a non-scientific survey of several hundred.
Out of eleven choices, those Palo Alto baby boomers cited "education and libraries" as
the top city service they presently use and as also the one most
personally valuable to them. Approximately one in four of respondents
listed "education and libraries" as where new city services were needed, ranking
it behind transportation and health and fitness opportunities (multiple
responses were allowed). Read the full city
study. |
Library Closed for Holidays |
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Palo Alto's libraries will be closed on Friday, November 10 for Veteran's Day.
The libraries will also close early at 6 pm on Wednesday, November 22 for
Thanksgiving eve, and all Thursday and Friday, November 23 and 24. Even
when the libraries are closed, you can still
search the online
catalog, submit
reference desk questions,
access many online resources, and
get book
recommendations. |
Children's Library Monster? |
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What's that odd woolly monster doing in the new Children's Library? We
thought it might be a giant bookworm hungry for books to consume, but it's
actually rolled-up straw that goes outside and directs rainwater away from the
building. Whew!
The Children's Library is current scheduled to reopen in September 2007. In the
meantime, see more
photographs of the latest activity. Photo credit: Barbara Silberling. |
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, November 12.
Please bring grocery bags to put books into.
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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Sale Offers Great Courses on Tape |
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Although you may come to our sale for books, sale manager Marty Paddock
points out that one of our most exciting bargains are the college courses on
tape we offer from the Teaching Company. For just $30, you can get
the video tape version of Human
Prehistory and the First Civilizations, which sells on new DVDs for $200. Popular lecturer
Robert Greenberg's How to Listen to and Understand Opera comes on
sixteen audio tapes for just $12, versus $65 new, while the audio tape
version of How to Read and
Understand Poetry goes for $15, far less than the original $130 price. If these don't seem like bargains, consider taking the video tape course Economics: An
Introduction for just $45. You'll find all our courses on tapes
across from travel books as you enter our Main Room. |
Window Shop on Your Computer |
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Check out our shelf preview
pictures to see thousands of the books for sale this weekend. |
Friends Give $169,000 to Library |
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The Friends of the Palo Alto Library are giving $169,000 to the Palo Alto
City Library to expand the library collection and provide numerous programs
and events throughout the year. The funds were raised from many donors,
members, volunteers, and booksale customers.
Palo Altans are among
the top library users in the state, checking out about 1.3 million items annually, and are clearly eager for
even more. Accordingly, the Friends are enhancing the library's
collection by providing approximately $50,000 to triple the number purchased
of audio books on CDs, $25,000 for extra copies of high-demand titles to
reduce hold time, $30,000 for other books, $20,000 for DVDs, and $10,000 for
additional online resources. These grants add 23% to the city's current
collection budget, putting Palo Alto at the very top in collection spending
among similar-sized California cities.
Palo Alto's Library
Director Diane Jennings says,
"This year, as in past years, the grants
awarded by the Friends are contributing greatly to the Library's ability to
meet the demand for quality collections." Jennings notes, "An excellent
collection provides the foundation for our service, and I thank the Friends
for their generous support of it."
The Friends are also continuing their
long-time support of library programs, providing approximately $9,000 for
children's events in the library, another $9,000 for the summer reading
program for children and teens, $6,500 for adult and family events, up to
$7,500 for the Palo Alto Reads community program, and $2,000 for library
staff appreciation. The Friends provide additional monies throughout the
year to the library for technology and have donated over $1.1 million since
mid-2004.
Among the sources for the funding are a Cable Co-op Legacy Grant
and the efforts of more than 150 volunteers. Over a quarter million
used books, DVDs, CDs, and other items are donated to the Friends each year
for its Cubberley Community Center-based monthly booksale, one of the most
successful of its kind in the nation. |
Library Reports High Usage |
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Palo Alto Library usage remains very high, according to the library's Annual
Report for the fiscal year 2005-2006. The library anticipated a possible
decline because the Children's Library is closed for renovation and expansion
and loan times increased this past year for most items from three weeks to four.
Instead, the number of visits rose to 885,565, about 1% higher than the previous
fiscal year, while the number of items checked out was virtually unchanged at 1,280,547.
Some 21,227 new books and 5,822 new media items were purchased for the library
collection, up 38% overall from the prior year. The library's annual budget itself
rose almost 16% to $5.9 million.
Library patrons nationwide are using technology more and that trend shows up
throughout Palo Alto's statistics. The number of holds, placed primarily through the library's website, more than doubled from the prior
year to 181,765. About 84% of checkouts in the Main and Mitchell Park libraries were made
at self-check machines. Internet sessions on library computers (exclusive of
laptops) rose 36% over the prior year to 155,558. 993,139 remote catalog searches were
conducted, up 40%. And with more people using the Internet, reference
and research inquiries of library staff declined by 10% to 123,518.
The closure in Children's Library was perhaps responsible for a small decline in
library program attendance to 30,739. Fewer people also volunteered in the
libraries, reducing the number of volunteer hours by 23% to 5,838.
The report also lists some current efforts,
including:
• Work on the City Council-directed plan to improve the library system (see
article below)
• Improvements at the Main and Downtown libraries to create more public space
• Completion of the teen areas at the Main and Mitchell Park libraries
• Redesign of the library's website
• Providing recommendations to the Council on technology improvements, including possible access to
Link+
• City performance audit of the library operations
The report is available at all library branches and
online. |
Council to Review Library Plan in December |
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A proposal to improve Palo Alto libraries will likely come to the City Council on
December 4 and 11, almost two years after the Council directed its Library Advisory
Commission to define a new vision for the city-wide system. The Council
is considering funding the plan through a June 2008 ballot measure, with a
year-long architectural design and environmental impact study to occur prior to
that.
The Library Advisory Commission's proposal incorporates a projection that the
city's population will increase by about 1/3 over the next few decades,
creating more users for the Mitchell Park Library. Based on that, library
design expert Kathy Page calculated recently that the branch needs to triple in
size to at least 28,500 square feet. Moving in the library's Technical Services and Administration
offices will require additional space.
The Group 4 architectural firm found that replacing the existing library by a new building on the southwest end of the
site will likely be the most cost-effective
configuration and might avoid triggering expensive underground parking. It would also
align the driveway entering the complex with Mayview Avenue on the other side of Middlefield
Road, eliminating a traffic signal, and perhaps allowing the existing branch to
remain open during construction.
The new building might also
include a replacement for the Mitchell Park Community Center. Group 4
anticipates that the library and community center could share program space,
bathrooms, and other areas. The
combined facility would range from 42,000 up to 51,000 square feet. The Parks and
Recreation Commission itself contemplates needing space for future growth,
anticipating that the rising city
population will force the school district to reopen the nearby Cubberley Community Center
as a high school.
In addition to the substantial improvements at
Mitchell Park, the Library Advisory Commission and library staff are also
preparing recommendations for the library's annual operating
budget. At its October 26
meeting, commissioners tentatively recommended being open four hours more each week at the
Mitchell Park branch, keeping the Children's Library open two additional hours a
week, and adding one or two more service days per week to the College Terrace
and Downtown branches. They also supported increasing children and teen
programs, volunteer coordination, staffing for both existing hours and
additional collection development, and custodial services. At previous
meetings, commissioners hoped for substantial increases for library technology
and the collection budget. With additional items awaiting discussion, the
draft recommendations would add at least three-quarters of a million dollars to
the annual budget, plus an additional $1.5 million over several years to fill
shelves in an enlarged Mitchell Park branch. City council
members have cautioned that the city cannot fund budget increases and have asked
the City Auditor to look for operating efficiencies.
You can learn more by reading an
earlier version of the Commission's proposal or by attending the upcoming meetings.
You can also email comments to
library.commission@cityofpaloalto.org
and the
city.council@cityofpaloalto.org. The scheduled meetings (subject to
change) are:
November 15 - Library Advisory Commission, 6:30 pm, Downtown Library, 270 Forest Ave.
November 16 - Library Advisory Commission, 7 pm, City Hall, 250 Hamilton Ave.
November 30 - Library Advisory Commission, 7 pm, City Hall, 250 Hamilton Ave.
December 4 - City Council Meeting, 7 pm, City Hall, 250 Hamilton Ave.
December 11 - City Council Meeting, 7 pm, City Hall, 250 Hamilton Ave.
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Let's Check out Books |
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The Friends of the Palo Alto Library Singers, known for their eclectic
repertoire, performed the following song at
last month's well-attended Annual Meeting.
Let's Do It
With apologies to Cole Porter
Moms do it, dads do it,
Even little girls and lads do it,
Let's do it, let's check out books.
Teachers who strain to explain do it,
Children who now go to Main do it,
Let's do it, let's check out books.
Some fans who drive quite a ways do it
To get books for themselves,
Folks at Downtown do it – look at those empty shelves.
Punks who aren't good, know they should, do it,
Terman Park's old users wish they could do it,
Let's do it, let's check out books.
The smallest babes do it, teens do it,
Senior citizens in jeans do it,
Let's do it, let's check out books.
Mitchell Park folks, in a squeeze, do it,
Lots of College Terracees, do it.
Let's do it, let's check out books.
Some who crave thick monographs do it
Though perusing is slow;
We've heard the staff do it - when
Circulation is low.
For an exam, kids who cram do it,
Some who cannot read a telegram do it,
Let's do it, let's check out books.
Rich financiers with careers do it,
Tired booksale volunteers do it,
Let's do it, let's check out books.
Sellers to spiff up their homes, do it,
Ptolemaics who love tomes, do it,
Let's do it, let's check out books.
Globe-trotting types on the go, do it,
Flying off to Saigon,
Those with no dough, do it,
'Cuz it beats Amazon.
And that's why you do it,
We do it,
Even those who cannot sing on key do it,
Let's do it, let's check out books. |
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