Library offering bargains at sale

By Jeanne Starmack

Chances are good you’ll find what you want at the book sale.

SHARON, Pa. — What’s your coffee table look like these days?

Is it full of dust? Maybe a coffee cup ring or two on there?

Well, consider this week the perfect time to clean it off and dress it up.

No, it’s not Coffee-table Awareness Week. But it is time once again for the giant, blowout, three-day Friends of the Library used-book sale. It begins Wednesday.

You’ll find plenty of coffee-table books there, along with loads of reading material that includes fiction and nonfiction.

There are mysteries, science fiction, biographies, westerns, sports, paperbacks, humor, magazines, and young-adult and children’s books for your reading pleasure. Like to listen instead? Check out the “tapes galore,” as Friends’ Kay Joho puts it.

And if you are in the need to know just about anything at all, you’ll find some help in the stacks at the sale. Subjects there include gardening, cooking, needlework and embroidery, business, finance, investing, law, nature, religion, drama, poetry, art, travel, economics, Christmas, the Kennedys, and U.S. and world history.

Dictionaries can be had for 25 cents — even the really big ones. Or, you could splurge and spend $25 on a collectible that’s priced lower than you’d find it for on the Internet.

For the most part, you can expect to spend between 25 cents and $3 for books, with the sale’s “one-of-a-kinds” going for $3 to $6.

The sale benefits the Community Library of the Shenango Valley, and the money is much appreciated by that independent and nonprofit organization, its leaders say.

“Up to a couple of years ago, Sharon was the biggest contributor” to the library’s budget, said Stella Perrine of the library’s board of directors. At that time, the library, which was even called the Sharon Library at one point, was part of the city’s government. Then, the city cut back its funding.

“[Sharon] had financial setbacks,” Perrine said.

The city does still contribute, as does Hermitage and the state.

But the library started a three-year campaign drive this year to make up for a $75,000-a-year budget shortfall.

Even though the campaign started late, in September, the library hopes to raise the entire amount for 2008, Perrine said. “We did a large mailing to previous donors,” she said.

The library received some large donations from corporations, Perrine said, along with “lots of small ones.”

The book sale can actually help with the fund-raising drive, said Joho, because it can provide a match needed for the Shenango Valley Foundation’s grant of $5,000.

At the group’s three-day sale in May, it raised $7,500, Joho said.

Pledge cards also are available at the library’s main desk or at its updated Web site, www.clsv.net.

The library has added programs and services, such as more children’s story times, Perrine said.

It is now also a site where nonprofit organizations can search a subscription database for grants, said library director Amy Geisinger.

Its community room is available at a bargain price of $35 a day for activities that are not library-related, she also said.

“We feel like, if the library has helped you in your life, will you help the library?” Perrine said.

The book sale begins at 9 a.m. Wednesday, when, Joho said, you can expect to see bargain hunters lined up waiting to get in.

starmack@vindy.com