The Wiarton Branch of the Bruce County Library is now housed in a 3,000 square foot facility opened in November of 2002. The Friends of the Wiarton Library accepted responsibility for furnishing the new library, setting a goal of $25,000.

Flyers to the community and personal letters to business and well-known citizens started in May 2002. Funds were raised through a variety of projects.

• Raffle – gift basket
• T-Shirt sales
• Memorial receipts distributed to local funeral homes
• Donation boxes at circulation desk – voluntary tax
• Book Bag sales
• Used Book sale
• Slide show
• Dollar donation per year for your birthday
• Trivia night hosted by the Rotary Club

The Friends exceeded their fundraising goal while at the same time generating goodwill and publicity for the library. Over two dozen press releases were issued during the campaign to keep the community informed of the project.

In a symbolic gesture, a book brigade was staged to move books from the old to the new location. Three hundred volunteers made up the three block brigade, and 35 books were transferred, one for each year the library had been housed in the town hall.

Tom Wood, Wiarton FOL Vice-Chair, credits the fundraising committee strategy for their success. The committee included 6 FOL, 2 members from the local Rotary Club, and the Library Supervisor.

The committee held over a dozen meetings, staged events and developed a six page public relations program which defined the objective, time period, target audience, methodology and budget.

** click on any thumbnail picture to view a larger image
Nicholas Spillios making presentation speech.	Presentation of award plaque with Lahring Tribe of Random House of Canada		Tom Wood's acceptance of award	Group photo following ceremony, with Jami van Haaften, Lahring Tribe, Carole Smith and Tom Wood of Wiarton and Nicholas Spillios.

Presentation speech - FOLUSA Awards luncheon
 

Friends are precious. Friends are kind.  Friends are committed.

On behalf of the Friends of Canadian Libraries, it is indeed an honor and privilege to present the FOCAL Award in recognition of outstanding
work by a Friends group.  Criteria taken into account included the extent that the community and volunteers are involved in projects and creativeness of projects undertaken.

This year we are pleased to present the award again with the generous support of Random House to Wiarton Friends for $500.00 for books and to present to the Wiarton Friends a plaque recording their award.  We sincerely hope that by offering this award, we can encourage all Friends to continue in their support of improving quality library services.

Our congratulations.  We also thank the Friends who made other submissions.  We encourage them to submit again in 2004.
 

Nicholas Spillios
Director, Prairies, Territories