Blog
Recent studies calculate the nationwide, averaged value of volunteer time at an eye-popping $31.80 – per hour. Let’s use that as the basis of a thought experiment. By our most cautious count, our member network here at the Minnesota Association of Library Friends boasts a collective reach of more than 19,000 library-lovers across our great state. If each of these Friends of the Library volunteered just one hour of time to their group in 2023, that would ladder up to an instant $604,200 investment in our libraries!
Thanks to everyone who joined us this month for Warm Reads For Cold Nights: Minnesota Authors Recommend. It was a jam-packed hour with quality suggestions to match every reader profile. Our featured guests, Shannon Blackmer (Milkweed Editions) and Matt Smiley (University of Minnesota), shared hot-off-the-presses recommendations that ran a truly wide gamut: from Godzilla, to ethnobotany, to time-tested smokehouse techniques.
Icelanders indulge in a beloved winter tradition called Jólabókaflóð, which translates literally to "Christmas book flood." In the run-up to Yule, family and friends gift each other new books to fill the country's cold and notoriously long winter nights. As the next holiday season approaches, MALF wants to bring a little Jólabókaflóð spirit right here to Minnesota. Please join us on Thursday, November 16 (1:00-2:30 p.m. Central) for Warm Reads for Cold Nights: Minnesota Authors Recommend [Year 2].
Congratulations to Friends of the Babbitt Public Library, winners of the 2023 Evy Nordley Award for Best Project by Friends. Babbitt (pop. 1,380) is one of the smallest communities to ever earn MALF’s highest prize –– which goes to show that exemplary, innovative Friends work happens within groups and towns of all sizes!
A real-life legal case with a supernatural bent inspired lawyer-turned-novelist Allen Esken’s latest thriller, Saving Emma. Eskens told MALF all about this backstory, and much more, on September 30 when he joined Friends for our fourth annual Saturday Splash event.