Please note that due to the holidays, the December meeting of the Board of Trustees has been moved to Tesday, December 12^th at 6:15 p.m. It will be held in the Library’s third-floor rotunda. As always, the public is invited to attend.

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!

The Friends of the John Jermain Memorial Library will run their annual bus trip to New York City on Wednesday, December 13^th this year. The Friends run this trip every year so local residents have the opportunity to do a little pre-Christmas shopping and sightseeing, or maybe take in a matinee of a Broadway show, without having to deal with traffic and parking in the City.
The bus will leave from the parking lot behind the Apple Bank on Main Street promptly at 8:00 a.m. Please arrive by 7:45 a.m. On the return trip the bus will depart from New York City at 7:00 p.m. from in front of the NBC studios on 50th Street between 5th and 6th Avenues.

The cost of the trip is $35.00 per person. Checks, should be made payable to Friends of the John Jermain Memorial Library and mailed to Sara Gage, P.O. Box 2764, Sag Harbor, NY 11963. Checks may NOT be dropped off at the Library. The Friends regret that they cannot accept payment by credit card.

This trip sells out early every year, so make your reservations soon.
For more information call Sara Gage at 631 725-5035 or Judy Cash at 631 725-3920.

The public is invited to join Library Director Allison Gray and members of the Library Development Committee on a tour of five East End libraries on Friday, November 17^th. We will be visiting libraries on both the north and south forks to see how they have addressed their space needs, and to discuss with them how well their solutions have worked.

High points will include a visit to a library with a restored historic building that it rents out for events; as well as a visit to a library with a brand new young adult area. The five libraries are Amagansett, Rogers Memorial (Southampton), Hampton Bays, Mattituck-Laurel and Southold. The bus will leave at 9:00 a.m. and will be back no later than 5:00 p.m. Bringing your own brown-bag lunch is recommended.

If you would like to come along on this free bus trip, please call 725-0049, extension 23, no later than November 10^th.