By Pamela West-Finkle
November is a month to be thankful and I am going to spend my library notes being grateful.
First, in honor of Veterans’ Day, I am thankful for each and every veteran who has served his or her country for the sake of preserving our freedom. Happy Veteran’s Day to all those who served in the Armed Forces!
Secondly, I am thankful that we have successfully moved into our temporary space and that the construction project at our beloved library is finally beginning after two long years of ups and downs, successes and disappointments, and many challenges along the way.
Thank you to those volunteers and helpers who pitched in for the moves. Gloria Carlson helped me to hand select fiction and non-fiction. Deb Slating helped me to set up those sections and the audio books in the temporary library. Other fantastic helpers were Linda Lederman, Claire Durante, Kathy DuMortier, Linda Egner, Diane Lockspeiser, Judy Garrison, Arvin Ajamian, Bob Murphy and Kari Haugeto. Lastly, a big thank you to Abbey Movers of Delhi who helped with moving things to the temporary library, Tom Winchester and Rich Johnson for helping dismantle and reinstall shelves, Jasper Wright for making many trips up and down Main Street with his forklift, as well as the nine SUNY Delhi Delta Epsilon fraternity students who helped finish the storage move on October 5th.
Thank you to the Andes Public Library Board members, Judy Garrison, Linda Lederman, Rima Walker, Pat Brannen, Claire Durante, William Duke, and Treasurer Maggie Reinmann, as well as our former members—Buffy Calvert, Phyllis Galowitz, Marty Donnelly, and Debbie Abbate—for being amazing through the very stressful strategic planning process.
Thank you to the Four County Library System, the State Library Construction Aid, the O’Connor Foundation, Senator Seward, as well as all of our wonderful local patrons and supporters who have helped to provide the funding we needed to undertake these massive goals.
A special, special thank you goes to Kari Haugeto, Deb Slating, and Gloria Carlson for all of the extra work and volunteer hours, above and beyond, they put in, helping make our library a gem in the mountains!
I am so grateful to be able to serve this community and I am grateful for the wonderful friends I have made in my three years as director of the Andes Public Library. I’ll be home recuperating from surgery over the next two months, but I am looking forward to seeing everyone again after the holidays! I’ll be working from home, however, so if you have a question or need technical assistance, please feel free to ask Deb or Gloria, or have them call me while you’re there with them at the library and I’ll do my best to help answer your question or figure out your tech issues.
Happy Holidays to you and yours!~