By LIA MARTIN
Contributing writer
Library volunteer Jeanne Beardsley helps to shelve one of the movie DVDs to be found at the Sun City Center Library. Lia Martin photo.
Librarian Elaine Birkinshaw says her favorite job of all time was when she was the librarian of a bookmobile library in Sarasota County.
“Each stop had its own personality,” Birkinshaw says. “I was able to see my patrons up-close-and-personal.”
Her favorite stop there was Siesta Key because, she said, she felt the readers were more sophisticated. A half-hour before she was due to arrive, they would meet and discuss the books they had read that week and were waiting to return. By the time Birkinshaw arrived, they were trading books among themselves.
She loves the Sun City Center Library for that same reason. Birkinshaw has been the library administrator there for three years now and feels she has the same personal relationship with local residents as she did when she was working for the bookmobile library. She says the patrons in Sun City Center are also appreciative of the opportunity to have a library locally and contribute by serving as volunteers and by donating books and money to help out.
Birkinshaw attributes the love of volunteering in Sun City Center to Del Webb, who was the creator of the Sun City Center development for those 55 and older. Webb was a real estate developer and also part owner of the New York Yankees baseball club. He developed senior retirement communities from Arizona to Florida.
“That was Del Webb’s concept of a senior community. It would be self-supporting,” Birkinshaw says. “It would have a paid structure to provide the backbone for the rest of the community to work.”
She feels that is why residents in Sun City Center have a spirit of volunteering and have a spirit of giving back to the community. At the library, there are 40 volunteers from 50 to 90 years old and a waiting list to volunteer. Most of the volunteers are women, but there are men also shelving books and helping people on the computer.
“You have people in Sun City Center that have come here from all over the world,” Birkinshaw says. “A huge plus to our community is the generosity of the people here that support our library.”
She says everyone from previous CEOs to homemakers comes to the library. In one instance, she was asked by a patron, who had never had time to read, to help him get started.
The Sun City Center Community Association Library is what is called a browsing library, she says. This means there is a small collection in-house, with the opportunity to reserve books through the Hillsborough County Public Library system.
There are two links that help library patrons. First, Hillsborough County has a system that provides electronic resources online. From home, or the library, a patron can reserve books, which are brought to the library for them locally. The website is www.hcplc.org.
Secondly, the Sun City Center Library site has a cataloging system, which has been updated and is almost ready to launch. It will make it easier for patrons to see the books they want to reserve and how many copies are available. Another real plus is that the new software update will enable patrons to use their smaller electronic devices to access the system. The new update should be ready to use by Nov. 3, according to Birkinshaw.
That website is webopac.infovisionsoftware.com/suncity.
Though the library is only for members of the Sun City Center Community Association, Kings Point residents can pay $24 yearly to use its services.
The library was started by the Sun City Center Woman’s Club in 1963. They donated 500 books and made sure there was a librarian on hand as well. The library started as two model homes put together. The annual budget of the library is $15,000, excluding the salaries of Birkinshaw, who is the only full-time paid employee, and three part-time employees.
What also makes the library a success, Birkinshaw says, is its central location to the community, whose members come to take care of other business and drop by the library on their way home.
By the first of the year, the expansion to the library will be finished, and there will be room for patrons to stay and visit awhile and a room set aside for meetings. Off and on, Birkinshaw cautions, there will be closures to the library as construction work is done there.
