Love Your Library campaign launches in Hampton, throughout Allegheny County

Some patrons of Hampton Community Library circle a certain month on the calendar.

“They will say to me, ‘Are we going to do Love Your Library in September?’” library director Suzanna Krispli said. “And they will wait until Sept. 1 and write me a check and say, ‘All right, here it is,’ and it gets matched.”

The reference is to the Allegheny County Library Association’s annual Love Your Library campaign. Throughout the month, donations made to each of the county’s libraries are matched on a prorated basis, up to $200,000 total, by the Jack Buncher Foundation.

“It’s always a blessing when we can have some extra funding that we don’t count on, that is not in the budget to begin with,” Krispli said.

To help celebrate, Hampton is joining with libraries in neighboring communities, Shaler North Hills and Northern Tier, for a first-time Local Book Club Trivia Bonanza.

“We’re going to do what the best reads were, what the worst reads were. We’re going to vote on them,” Krispli said about the event, scheduled for 6:30 p.m. Sept. 15 at the Hampton Community Center. “You don’t need to be a literary whiz. You don’t need a master’s degree in English lit, because trivia is based on all the fun stuff.”

Last year, Love Your Library raised a record $1.23 million overall in charitable contributions by more than 7,450 donors, including almost 1,600 first-timers. Since its inception, the campaign has generated more than $5.26 million, along with continuing to create awareness about everything that 21st-century libraries have to offer.

“There’s so much more going on than just books,” Allegheny County Library Association chief executive officer Amy Anderson said. “That’s an important part of what we do. It’s never going to go away.”

But people who remember the days of rummaging through card catalogs and sternly being shushed may not realize the scope of what’s available today, from vast arrays of programming for all ages to vast inventories of digital material available for download.

In Hampton, new products to borrow are being introduced during Love Your Library Month, including Playaway’s Launchpad for Kids, a device that Krispli described as safe and basically indestructible.

“It’s a fun way to say, look, when you support the library, we are able to gain these extra funds, and we put these funds right back into the collection,” she said. “We put it back into what people want here in Hampton.”

The Love Your Library campaign coincides with the American Library Association’s National Library Card Sign-Up Month, and for Allegheny County residents, that means “it will work anywhere in the county at any of the libraries,” Anderson said. “You could go right now and pick up a book off the shelf.”

Returns can take place at any of the libraries, as well. And through the ACLA’s online catalog, materials can be reserved for pickup.

“It also allows us to have books delivered to you,” Anderson said. “If South Fayette has a book that you really want and you can’t go over there to get it, we can have it delivered to your library. And it will all be delivered to you free of charge. We’re all linked on the same system, so it makes for a nice service for everyone in the county.”

In Hampton, look for staff members wearing their Love Your Library T-shirts during September, and for a jar at the desk for donations that can be matched. After all:

“Pennies and nickels add up,” Krispli said.

For more information, visit www.hamptoncommunitylibrary.org and loveyourlibrary.org.