Want to make an impression? Send a real greeting card through the USPS complete with a handwritten note and signature. Almost something of the past, these make people smile! While often expensive (the mark up from production to sale is about 200%. That is, of course, if you buy them at a grocery or card store. The Friends have unique and colorful cards for all occasions priced at just $1 each - a bargain for a beauty! Absolutely the best in town.

This summer's Adult Summer Reading Club theme "between the covers" intrigued a TAB (Teen Advisory Board) member to create an altered book - the Demon Book. Others are more restrained - butterflies and flowers. Some create stories through pockets cut into the book's pages. See photos on the MPL blog. The SRC begins June 11. Sounds like fun!

Amazing bookcases! Check out the infinity bookcase that actually stores a finite number of books in a unique way and the secret staircase bookshelves. While the secret staircase is shown in this post as well, here are nineteen more ideas.

Information just doesn't float around and get gathered on its own. Libraries give it structure. It's a place that people come to create information and knowledge.
Joyce Ogburn

If you're interested in the wide range of books available at Amazon from the Friends, you can now see the most recent listings on our Online Store page just under the Friends Store tab. To see the entire listing of over 770 books  click here

Books, the children of the brain.
Jonathan Swift

Those who say truth is stranger than fiction have wasted their time on poorly written fiction.
Mark Twain

Amazing! Here's something new to do  with a few thousand hardback books nobody wants? If you're Brit-art troupe Responsible Fishing, you take over a lecture theater in northern England and create this compact-yet-stately domino chain named 'Knock On Effect'.  Watch the World Record World record attempt Book Domino Chain Reaction.

"There I was in another unbalanced relationship," begins Emmy-award winning comedian Paula Poundstone in a new public service announcement about Friends of the Library. Viewing it just takes 30 seconds. Check it out!

While in the Friends Store this past week, I found this  powerful book, Reading Rooms - a collection of some of America's best writers commenting on public libraries with stories, memoirs, essays, and poems. Edited by Susan Allen Toth and John Coughlan, their selections are both a tribute to the public library's role in American history and literature and a reminder that they are under a serious threat today, ailing from budget cuts and censorship battles in cities and towns across the nation. Wherever it opens, I have a treasure to read.