Civil War expert Mark Depathy
Historian Dennis Picard
In 2015, patrons of the Tolland Public Library could read Newsweek online for free, meet award-winning authors, learn to play chess, research their family tree and even compete in a poetry slam thanks to $15,828 in grants from the Tolland Public Library Foundation.
The Foundation also hosted six talks on Tolland history as the town celebrated its 300th anniversary and taught owners of small businesses how to market their products through social media.
It all made for an exciting year, just as the library embarked on an ambitious expansion into the former gym at the Hicks Memorial Building at 21 Tolland Green, Library Director Barbara Pettijohn said.
“Our library staff is grateful for the grants we received all year from the Tolland Public Library Foundation,” she said. “As our library grows in 2016, we look forward to partnering with the Foundation on more lively programs and important initiatives.”
Established in 1996, the Foundation receives donations to benefit the Tolland Public Library and to enhance library services beyond what the town budget provides.
Most of its funding is drawn from income from the Phoebe Dimock King and Elizabeth C. King Eaton Endowment. Eaton, a medical librarian in Texas who died in 2009, made a large bequest to the Foundation to honor herself and her mother, who had served on the Tolland library staff for many years.
Through a Foundation grant, residents started 2015 by getting “fiscally fit” though a free series of lectures on personal finance.
The fifth season of the Eaton-Dimock-King Authors Series brought debut novelist Karen Guzman, young adult author Cindy L. Rodriguez and author Jeff Goldberg, whose book chronicled the UConn-Tennessee women’s basketball rivalry, to Tolland.
In March, the Foundation sponsored its fourth annual poetry slam for students aged 12 to 18 from Tolland and surrounding towns. It will hold the next poetry slam March 10 at 6:30 p.m. in Conference Room A of town hall.
From April through October, the library celebrated the town’s 300th anniversary with well-attended lectures that examined every 50 years of the town’s history. The series ended with a lively panel by three teachers, Ivy Morrison, James MacArthur and Carlton Cayward, who reminisced about “Growing Up and Teaching Tolland” from 1965 to 2015.
In the summer, grants from the Foundation and the UConn Chess Club allowed the library to offer chess lessons to Tolland students in grades 3 and up. The lessons are continuing throughout the current school year.
In the fall, the Foundation held another popular talk on “How to Pay for College” and purchased college and financial aid guides for the library.
The Foundation’s funding also provided library patrons and Tolland residents with useful databases, including Ancestry.com, the Job Now! employment database and TumbleBooks, an online animated collection of 540 books, puzzles and videos.
Another Foundation grant now allows library cardholders to read three magazines – Newsweek, US Weekly and Outside – for free from any computer or mobile device using the Flipster digital magazine subscription service.
Library patrons can read the magazines online at the library, from home or anywhere using a smartphone or tablet. Just visit tolland.org, click on the library page, follow it to “login to databases” and then login into Flipster using your library card bar code.
As the library is expanding, the Foundation is exploring what technology and materials to purchase that are not included in the project’s budget, Linda Byam, president of the Foundation’s board of directors, said. Under restrictions in Eaton’s bequest, the EDK Endowment income cannot be used to fund library salaries or investments in the library’s physical plant.
“Libraries have truly evolved into community hubs, and the Foundation was pleased to help make Tolland Public Library a destination in 2015,” she said. “It’s going to be a great partnership again in 2016.”
