On the subject of volunteers

Today, the Huntington Beach Public Library is celebrating our volunteers with a recognition lunch and event. We are bringing together our most dedicated volunteers to recognize their commitment to the library and to celebrate all they do for us throughout the year.

Volunteers help the library in so many ways. They help raise money to provide additional support for library programs and materials. They run a bustling used bookstore and an amazing gift shop. Volunteers help people in the community learn to read, by becoming Literacy tutors. Some of our volunteers help with Children's programming, some help with the Taste of Huntington Beach. Some help with our Homework Clubs and some help with other events or programs. Many of our new volunteers are helping us as computer coaches, but many volunteers have been helping us for many years, and their enthusiasm for the Library continues unabated. They are all truly remarkable.

Over the past year, the Library has had great success expanding our volunteer programs and providing new volunteer opportunities for members of the community to give back and to help make the library that much better. We introduced our new Computer Coach Volunteer program and we now have regularly scheduled computer coaches available to help people with e-mail, Internet searches, printing questions, etc. We have launched our new Computer training classes, pairing librarians and trained volunteer computer coaches to provide hands on instruction on a variety of computer skills. We hope to further expand our volunteer opportunities, adding more computer coaches in our Children's and Media departments, and we will be starting a Library Docent program, to help people navigate all the resources available at the library.

Our volunteers have consistently given over 40,000 hours of service a year over the past five years, and their support and energy continues to grow.

So I would like to take this opportunity to say a very public Thank You to every volunteer that has worked for the Library - we appreciate everything you do! Thank you and Enjoy your celebration.