By: Sonora Slater
On Saturday, it’s a teen Magic the Gathering club. Days later, a Spanish conversation group. Free after-school homework help, makerspace drop-in hours, and a book repair cafe round out the weekly schedule, seamlessly blending community with functionality, creating one of the few spaces in today’s world where spending money is not an expectation upon entry. Have you succeeded in the game of guess-the-place? If not, we’ll help you out: It’s the Mary L. Stephens public library.
In the early years of America (think 1700s), lending libraries were typically restricted to private membership. It wasn’t until Andrew Carnegie’s well-known nationwide investment project in the late 19th and early 20th centuries that the concept of a public library was widely implemented state side. By 1920, there were more than 3,500 public libraries in the United States, and today there are more than 17,000.
But huge public services like this don’t just run by magic. It takes a continuous investment of both time and money to keep the lights on and the kids’ storytimes scheduled — beyond the tax revenue and state funds that libraries operate from, it also takes people deciding that moving and sorting boxes of books is exactly how they’d like to spend their Saturday.
One of the people who has decided that time and time again is Gino Greene. Greene is a UC Davis alumni who has volunteered nearly every day for more than a decade to Davis Friends of the Library, a fully volunteer organization that raises and donates funds to support library programs and promotes the library as a community center for all in Davis.
“I found there was a need for my help, so I offered, and it was accepted,” Greene said, making it out to be simple — but truthfully, the logistics that go into the fundraising endeavors of the organization are anything but.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, the Stephens library was closed to the public — but bi-monthly, outdoor book sales were approved. So, Friends of the Library collected donations and sold the best of their gathered books for low prices in the parking lot. The sales existed previously, but being one of the only events in Davis that was able to continue through the pandemic helped them to surge in popularity and awareness. Now that, as Greene says, “the books are flooding in,” the sales have doubled in frequency. They take place the first weekend of every month, and the small Friends of the Library storage room adjacent to the library is constantly full of books, puzzles, and DVDs laying in wait for the next sale, donated through a slot on the wall that’s open 24-hours a day.
Once books (or other media) are donated, sorters go through every item to determine if it should be added to the library’s collection, given to Logos (the used bookstore downtown that’s also run by Friends of the Library), or set out for the monthly sale.
The book sale books aren’t exactly sold at a premium — Davis Friends of the Library president Rory Osborne said they’re usually priced at $1-2 each (or $10 to fill a bag on Sundays). But between sheer volume and the profit from Logos where books are priced a little higher, Greene estimated that Friends of the Library gives about $115,000 a year to the Library, and sometimes more, all by volunteer efforts.
The money from both Logos and the book sales contributes significantly to the Library’s ability to host a variety of programs and provide a variety of resources to the public, including construction and maintenance of the Makerspace, annual summer reading programs and events, Lunar New Year and Dia de los Muertos celebrations, and more.
“Our stated purpose is to benefit the Library,” Greene said. “But the Library’s purpose is to benefit the community. We try to make this a real community thing.”
And by the way, as both Greene and Osborne added, if anyone in that community is perhaps on the younger side, and would like to help a largely retired volunteer base tote around heavy boxes of books… they’d be much obliged. But lest it all sound like work, Osborne reiterated the joy that many people find in contributing their time to something, like the library, that they’re truly passionate about.
“A lot of people when they were younger who were interested in reading said, ‘Gee, someday, maybe I’ll just work at an old used bookstore’,” Osborne said. “Those are the people who find us. So it’s a dream come true for some.”
For anyone else looking to get involved with either the book sales or Logos bookstore, Osborne had simple directions.
“Well,” Osborne said. “You show up.”


