Guild Library
 

Do you use your guild library? If so why or why not. If you are the librarian for your guild, do you keep magazines or other non-quilting books in the collection? Thanks for any response.

My guild's library is used by quite a few members. It contains quilt books and a few other quilt related items. Its great to be able to not have to buy a book for a single pattern you want to do. Also great just to check out and browse. I am not the librarian and appreciate all the effort put into keeping the library current. Periodically unchecked out books are pulled and sold to members at a very reduced price and used to buy new books.

As a follow-up question: if your guild has a library, where are the books/magazines kept between meetings? Thank you!

pchp, the books are kept in a locked cabinet at the recreation center where our meetings a held monthly. The reason for my question is because the cabinet is limited and the rec center does not want to allow more space for a larger cabinet. Also, few members use the library because they don't see, feel and touch the books for inspiration. Purchasing a book for just one pattern I agree is expensive. While some books have techniques explained, you can always invest in a well rounded technical book on quilting and borrow your guild library books for patterns. Am trying to find a happy balance.

My old guild had a glorious library, and I used it all the time. There were lots of books, as well as some specialty rulers, templates, and a computer with EQ and a couple other quilt programs loaded on it. We had a our own room (shared with the building manager, but he didn't disturb our stuff!), so it didn't have to be packed up at the end of each meeting.

Are you the librarian? Our librarian would "present" a few books at each meeting. Sometimes they were new ones, but often they were just picked from the library. She would talk about what you could find in each one, and pass them around for people to see. This really encouraged people to use the books.

We also had a "library challenge" each year. At the May meeting, if you had made a quilt from a book in the previous year you could enter by showing the quilt and saying what book you had used. All participants were then entered in a draw for a prize. It was fun to see what people had done with the books!

Edit to add: For magazines, we had a subscription to Canadian Quilter which was kept permanently. There was a sharing table for magazines donated by members; you could take them home and enjoy them, then return them (or not) as you wished. They weren't catalogued or checked in/out. If space had been limited, I suspect we wouldn't have done magazines.

Before I moved, I occasionally used the libraries of two guilds, usually to preview books that I might want to purchase.
I think my new guild has a library, but I don't know how big it is or how to check out the books. I know that they occasionally sell books that were donated during the meetings, and I sometimes buy those. At this point I have way too many quilting books and am trying to go on a book diet, as well as a fabric diet.

I don’t use the guild’s resource library because I can access most things on YouTube. Plus I’d rather socialize than look over what’s available.

What a great idea to have specialty rulers and templates, too.!

The guild I belonged to when I lived in Ontario had a very large library. I was one of the librarians, there were 3 of us. We had an annual budget. All the books were quilt related, but we tried to cover all topics, new trends, etc. We would ask members for book suggestions as well. The books were stored at the head librarian’s house, we had to lug the books to the meetings every 2 weeks - a big task and we rotated what we would bring as there was just too much setup involved to bring the entire library. Once a year we would sell off books that were dormant.

I agree that having specialty rulers/templates would be a great addition to any guild library!