On Friday November 17, a number of Sag Harbor residents joined me on a bus trip to visit five different East End libraries. We went with open minds, to see what services are offered by these libraries, what building expansions or projects they had gone through, and to receive advice. We learned some wonderful things.

At Rogers Memorial in Southampton, we saw the memorial rose garden, the brick walkway where people had inscriptions made, and the beautifully restored Cooper Hall which is used for meetings and the Friends of the Library booksale.

Hampton Bays has an amazing new teen area. It has multiple computers, study areas, space for collections, display space for teen artwork, a program space and a beautiful mural that one of their very talented librarians is painting. It is truly a young adult section to which we can aspire.

One of the North Fork libraries we visited has a beautiful donor wall called “The Giving Tree”. There is a tree with brass leaves which have donors’ names inscribed on them.

We saw a library that went through multiple additions in the last 15 years, with another one scheduled for next year. The goal in planning a library project is to build something that will suffice for the next 20-30 years.

One of our trustees was on the trip and took photos of some of the things I have mentioned. We’ll try to get them online so that you may see them too!