THE STATE OF THE LIBRARY

Happy New Year from our Church Library! We accomplished a lot of things in the past year. Here are a few noteworthy items:

THE STATE OF THE LIBRARY 2008

With the provided Church budget and donor funds, we have increased our collection of: Juvenile, Young adult, and Adult non fiction, Juvenile, Young adult and Adult Fiction Reference books, Greek Language books, Magazines, Non book media --CD's and DVD's .We have repaired our two ailing computers. A generous parishioner donated funds for a new copy machine and a beautiful stand,The Library has a presence on the Church web site and a BLOG ( Hocalibrary.blogspot.com) for up to date news, announcements and book reviews.This summer we provided a "VACATION KIT " for those families taking trips: Hand picked books appropriate for the ages of the children, Bible quizzes and riddles. Also we included a family read together book. Our special programs in the Fall included the film screening of Trojan Women and Antigone with an introduction by Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature, Kalliopi Nikolopoulou.We held a Library Open House in October ( library awareness day). We established Friends of the Library Volunteer Group. In December we held a Children's Christmas Raffle inviting children to check out a book and enter the raffle.

We continue our on going projects:
Story Time, once a month
Book Discussion Group, once a month
Purchasing of Library supplies and new materials
Sunday book feature and news in the Weekly Bulletin
Book Reviews and news in the Glad Tidings
Library bulletin board with colorful monthly book suggestions,
Reviews of new acquisitions on our library's Blog (HOCALibrary.blogspot.com)
Assistance to patrons on Sunday mornings
Delivery of books to elderly shut-ins.

Goals for the coming year: Update our computer technology - update to a level 3 program which will allow us to use barcodes and a scanner
Purchase a stationary laser scanner
Make our library catalog available on line
Continue increasing our library collection

Looking forward to 2009 we will continue to offer new resources to meet your needs. We always welcome suggestions and comments about how we can improve our collection and our library ministry. Hope to see you in the New Year!