Our First Friday offering for June proved to be very popular. Mary Flower performed to an appreciative audience. The Friends of Sandy Library are also having book sales and we have been offering a children’s craft activity during our First Friday programs. Along with the coffee and desserts, the library is the place to be — or at least the place to stop by — on First Fridays.

The library closed on June 20th for all-day staff training. Chief Yamashita taught us about the implications of HB 4016 and our responsibility as mandatory reporters. We also had a lot of hands-on time to practice downloading e-books and audiobooks to various devices.

A really stunning art show was hung on June 10th. The art was created by SPLASH,  a group of Willamette Valley artists. The art is inspired by the book Mink River by local author Brian Doyle. This show will remain at the library through the summer.

Dorothy Smith, longtime volunteer at the library retired for the second time on June 27. She volunteered for a period of 11 years and left to spend time with her husband. After his death, she returned to volunteer for another 5 years. We’ll miss Dorothy’s fine work, but we’ll still see her, as she is an avid reader and a very frequent library user.

Monica Smith worked with Judd Mills to present a classics program to children in 4th and 5th grades in the Oregon Trail District. They chose  Hamlet since this is the play that was performed at Sandy’s Shakespeare In The Park. It was a huge success. The kids absolutely loved it! They did a total of 30 programs at all of the schools. Monica did 6 library tours for classes from Sandy Grade and Cedar Ridge. The kids and teachers of all of the classes expressed their appreciation and all were really impressed with the new library. Summer Reading programs began in June with Cinda Tilgner and Snailpeople, both fantastic musical performers. In total, we have 456 kids signed up for the summer reading programs at both libraries.