For those of you unfamiliar with the JPL Foundation and the Friends of JPL–with how they got started and what they do–take a look at page one of this document.
Each March, the Library Director organizes an annual meeting of the Friends of the Library to review accomplishments, discuss the budget, and elect officers to serve until the next annual meeting. For the past several years, we’ve had just 4-5 Friends who regularly attend meetings, who help plan Friends events, and who are willing to serve as elected officers. This past March, instead of organizing the traditional annual Friends meeting, I decided to meet with these Friends to get their input on the idea of merging the Friends of the Library with the Johnston Public Library Foundation.
The plan discussed at the Friends’ March meeting included offering active Friends members the opportunity to continue supporting the library as they have in the past but as ad-hoc members of the Foundation. The work that these members previously did under the banner of the Friends would be done as part of a sub-committee of the Foundation—the Art In the Barn sub-committee, for example. Friends attending the March meeting were supportive of the merger idea, indicating that they are involved with the Friends as a way to support the library and are willing to continue that support as part of the Foundation.
In a subsequent meeting of the Foundation, it was decided that the Friends would not merge with the Foundation but would simply go “dormant”–meaning that labelling events as organized by the Friends and solicitations for new members would cease. Events like Art In the Barn, formerly organized by the Friends, will continue, however, and be organized by a committee of former Friends, Foundation members, and other volunteers.
This is all a convoluted way of saying that, for the foreseeable future, the Friends of the Library will not be an active organization but that, from the perspective of an outsider, very little will change in terms of events organized in support of the library.