Generous Patrons Give Blood

In a testament to the generosity of our patrons, the Great Neck Library's Blood Drive collected 45 pints of blood at our Blood Drive on Wednesday, the most in several years!  We held our drive from 1:30 to 7:30 and the wonderful professionals from the New York Blood Center screened and took care of the donors with smiles and music playing and yummy snacks at the end.

During the brief time that I was there to give blood, I saw donors as young as 16 years old come in to donate for the first time as well as older folks who are regular donors.

It might have been a bigger draw than usual because of the free Mets tickets the New York Blood Center was offering.  I don't know.  But we are grateful nonetheless for everyone's generosity.

If you were not able to join us on July 25th, you can go online to the New York Blood Center and find where the next blood drive nearest you will take place.

Music for a Summer Evening

I am excited to report that our first evening of our second year of the series, "Music for a Summer Evening" here at the Great Neck Library was a rousing success last night.  We began our series with a saxaphone quartet called "Four Saxy Guys" and using alto, soprano, tenor and baritone saxes created a magnificent sound.

Led by Marcello Blanco (a Great Neck native and former Levels kid) and featuring Frank Benvenuto, Richard Nasto and Anthony Pomponio, the group treated its enthusiastic audience to music from the jazz age, the ragtime era and much more, even throwing in a little Beethoven and Beatles.

I hope you can join us next week, on July 19th for something completely different, a duo called Nina Et Cetera who will entertain you with both original songs and original takes on music legends such as Elvis, Buddy Holly, Woody Guthrie and more. Nina and Tim with use guitar, harmonica, auto harp, piano, foot percussion, bass and something called porchboard bass.  I don't know what that is, but join me next week and we'll find out together.  Here they are.  See you on the 19th! 

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Building Advisory Committee

Since January, the newly-formed Building Advisory Committee or BAC for short has met twice a month to determine what needs to be done to get our Main Library renovated.  The committee, ably chaired by Trustee Marietta DiCamillo, has trustees, staff members (including myself), members of the public and some volunteers experts, engineers, architects and project managers who have agreed to lend their expertise to the process.

In January, the Great Neck Library Board of Trustees voted to renovate the Main Library within its existing footprint and not to expand.  So the committee is studying each department and each service the library provides to determine if the department or service needs to grow or shrink; where it could be located and whether or not portions of the collection or services could be moved from Main to one of the branches.

Minutes from all the meetings held to date are on our website so please read them and if you have any questions, concerns or ideas, please feel free to email me, call me or comment on this blog.  And all the meetings are open to the public.  You can find the schedule on our website as well.

Join us and become part of the process.  This is your library!  We want to make it efficient, beautiful and user-friendly.