Sean C. Morgan
The Sweet Home Public Library recently received a $4,500 grant from the Oregon Community Foundation to pay for pop-up libraries in the spring and summer.
“We’ve tested the waters,” said Libary Director Rose Peda. “We have attended events such as the safety fair, the health fair and, of course, the Capitol Christmas tree event.”
The pop-up libraries will be placed in local parks starting this spring, where residents can check out books on the spot.
“We take the the library out of the library to wherever the community is,” Peda said. Beginning in the spring, the library will host a pop-up library one weekend a month in a local park.
In the summer, the library will bring a live performer into the parks to encourage children to read, she said. “To do that we need to have a canopy with ‘Sweet Home Public Library’ and the city logo on it.”
Money from the grant will pay for that, the performers, books, equipment and “cute little yard signs that say ‘Welcome to the library,’” Peda said.
“There’s a lot of people, believe it or not, who still don’t know we have a library,” Peda said. This is one way to reach out to them. It will also serve people who cannot make it to the library.
The purpose “is just to raise awareness of the library,” she said, and improve access. While out there, library staff will answer questions about the library, services and programs and give people library cards.
Peda presented information about the Oregon Community Foundation to the City Council during its regular meeting on Dec. 11.
The foundation has an endowment of $1.9 billion. From that endowment, it is able to fund numerous nonprofit projects each year. William Swindells, the founder of Willamette Industries, founded the OCF in 1973 with $63,000.
In 2017, OCF awarded more than $118 million in grants and scholarships. In 2018, Peda said, OCF received just two applications from Linn County.