Thanks for being a Friend of the Marion Public Library! The Friends Board appreciates your membership and your commitment to the library. We'd like to thank you and encourage you to participate and be engaged in other ways. We hope this newsletter will help you to be aware of volunteer opportunities, provide you with some special Friends-only deals, and keep you up-to-date with what the Friends are doing. 

Lindsey Weber has volunteered as manager of the Friends Bookstore since June 2015. She enjoys her position that includes recruiting and scheduling volunteers to work in the store, sorting through donations, stocking the store shelves, and reporting store finances to the Friends Board at its monthly meetings.

 

Lindsey is a graduate of the University of Iowa with a BS in Communications with an Entrepreneurial Certificate. While at the University, she met Jonathan Weber and they've been married for seven years.

 

We'd love to have you share your time and talents by volunteering to work in the Friends Bookstore! Contact Lindsey at (515) 290-6322 or by email at lindsose@gmail.com. 

Who doesn't love BOGO (buy one get one)? We know you'll love our BOGO offer  throughout December. Buy one item and get another of equal or lesser value at no cost. 

Friends of the Marion Public Library are pleased to host this Humanities Iowa program by Barbara Lounsberry on Tuesday, October 17 starting at 7 p.m.  

Nancy Drew is the most popular female detective in fiction. Today she even outsells Miss Marple, Agatha Christie's venerable heroine. More than 200 million copies of Nancy Drew mysteries have been sold, and she has been translated into 17 different languages.

Few know, however, that Nancy is an Iowa heroine and that her creator was Mildred Augustine of Ladora, Iowa. Augustine wrote  The Secret of the Old Clock,  The Hidden Staircase--in fact 23 of the first 30 Nancy Drew mysteries. "Like a true daughter of the Middle West," Augustine wrote in the first Nancy Drew volume,  The Secret of the Old Clock, published in 1930, "Nancy Drew took pride in the fertility of her state and saw beauty in a crop of waving green corn as well as in the rolling hills and the expanse of prairie land."

Augustine was 25 when she wrote those words at her parents' home in Ladora. Her authorship of the first Nancy Drew mysteries--and single-handed creation of Nancy's admirable character--were kept secret for more than 50 years. Equally distressing is the fact that as Nancy grew in popularity, her Iowa roots were disguised.

Nancy Drew and her creator are extraordinary role models for Iowa girls and boys, women and men. Augustine was herself an intrepid Nancy Drew-like figure. An academic pioneer (the first woman to earn a bachelor's degree from the University of Iowa's School of Journalism), Augustine earned six airplane pilot's licenses, including one for sea planing; wrote 130 books for young people; and continued her newspaper column "On the Go" through her 96th and last year of life.

The presentation "Nancy Drew: Iowa's Heroine to the World" is designed to fortify Iowans young and old.

This program is free to all and everyone is welcome! 

Friends will be wrapping gifts as a fundraiser during the library's Bookfair at Barnes & Noble on Friday, December 15. We'd love to have you sign up for a shift to help wrap gifts for Barnes & Noble customers for a goodwill donation. Contact Library Friends Liaison Dawn Cline for more information or to schedule a slot to help.

 

If working in the bookstore or wrapping gifts isn't your cup of tea, there are other ways you can help. The library has an active volunteer program and many things you can help with. Library Assistant Sandy Ransier coordinates the library's volunteers. You can contact Sandy by phone at 319-743-1989 or email at sransier@cityofmarion.org to get an application and talk about opportunities.