Many Hands Make Light Work

Amish barn raisings; midwest farmers turning out en masse to assist an injured neighbor at harvest; Mennonite Central Committee canning bees -- these are prime examples of people turning out in large numbers to get something worthwhile done is a reasonably short time.

Some things lend themselves to such mass efforts. In Kilgore Memorial Library's history, two such events stand out. The entire library collection was moved from the old York Public Library Building at 306 E. 7th to Kilgore Memorial Library in one concerted effort on Saturday, April 5, 1986.

The item bar-codes used by the automated circulation system were applied to materials in the children's section in less than a week by a group of dedicated volunteers. This was a daunting task, because the labels were pre-printed to match items known to be in the collection and each label had to be matched to exactly the right item. To complicate matters, nearly a quarter of the items in the children's collection were second copies or had some other attribute which meant there was no label in the pre-printed set. Those extra items had to be dealt with as well.

On the other hand, some jobs require a single pair of dedicated hands, or groups working one at a time toward a common goal. We used to read of volunteer weather observers who faithfully recorded weather conditions at the same times every day for years on end. Automated equipment does that now I guess.

Meals On Wheels needs a delivery person for each route every weekday. Adopt-A-Pet's charges need care every day. Kilgore Memorial Library has "wish lists" waiting for the right pair of hands. Friends of the Library is looking for coordinators for future art displays, and the Avenue of Trees. A volunteer coordinator with a cadre of volunteers could help expand the library's program offerings for children and adults. Volunteers could assist gathering usage statistics and conduct informal surveys. A recent volunteer is working on expanding the variety of digitized local history resources in the library's FLICKR account. In the past, volunteers worked on the library's local newspaper indexing effort. That project has vast potential to benefit those who study local family history and local history.