September 5-October 2, 2026

Month-Long Silent Auction

Auction set-up crew. Front row: Kathy, Michelle A., Rhoda, Michelle V., Marcy, Karen, Jean, Kathryn, Ali, & Tucker. Back row: Tom (on tiptoes!), Bryan, & Sandy (Nancy is missing from group photo)

Click on photos below for captions and to enlarge:

Photos were taken by Michelle Valentino

On Friday, September 4, FOURTEEN energetic volunteers completed the set up for the Month-Long Silent Auction…tables, grid, tablecloths, and dozens of auction items…in a record-breaking ninety minutes! Creative teamwork (and plenty of zip-ties) turned the challenge of arranging 50 unwieldy items into an impressive display.

The annual auction opened for business at 10:00 a.m. Saturday, September 5, and over half the items had bids when the library closed on Sunday…two days later. Bidding will be open on the new or “just-like-new” items for four weeks.

For the fifth consecutive year, more than half the donations are brand-new in-the-box, ranging from top-of-the-line sporting equipment, appliances, and tools, to unique specialty items. Featured items include: a new Oru Inlet foldable kayak, a new Aftonshire rolling kitchen island, a new Canon color laser printer, a new Milwaukee battery hammer drill, and a new Kohler Cimmaron toilet.

Event chair, Sandy Grummon, said she is flabbergasted but delighted with the generosity of both members and library supporters who have donated to the auction. The Gold Beach community outdid themselves this year!

The auction will close on Friday, October 2, at 6:30pm.

July 2026

Party in the Park

All photos taken by Michelle Valentino.

Please click on photos below for captions and to enlarge:

A record-breaking crowd of 240 youngsters showed up at the annual PARTY IN THE PARK, which once again lived up to its reputation as one of Gold Beach’s favorite family events. It proved to be an unforgettable afternoon of FREE food, fun, games, and prizes for local and visiting grade-school/middle school age kids.

Beginning at noon on Saturday, July 11, Buffington Park came alive as 500+ attendees (participants, siblings and parents) gathered for this much-loved community celebration.

The Friends’ booth was an extravagant carnival booth, created under the supervision of chairperson, Nancy Schassen. Nancy had spent the previous six months collecting 120+ new and just-like-new stuffed animals from Friends members and local thrift shops to hang on the walls of the booth. The stuffed toys, which were given as prizes to participants, created a “carnie” ambiance.

Nancy depended upon a huge contingency of volunteers to set up the canopies, decorate the booth, work with the kids, and tear down the booth at the end of the day: Michelle Arnold, Laura Lee Cundiff, Dianne Daniels, Charlene Enoch, Marcy King, Lori Mascall, Kathy Neumann, Tucker Nunn, Midge Piland, Peg Reagan, Nancy Sue Rose, Kori Rotolo, Craig Shannon, Ria Shanon, Karen Sutherland, Michelle Valentino, Kathy Wells, and Iris Wilson. In addition, hard-working ASCEND interns, Ethan Lewis and Rhys Brown, and local high school student, Madison Trover, pitched in wherever/whenever they were needed

To earn a stuffed prize at the Friends’ booth, the younger children aimed plushy balls at small (but sturdy) cardboard boxes, and older kids aimed Nerf Blasters at two rows of rubber ducks with hopes of hitting a duckie with each blast. All the younger kids received a stuffed toy, while older kids had to hit two of the ducks to earn a stuffed animal.

It took over 2 hours to set up the booth, 3.5 hours to work the booth, and about 45 minutes to tear it all down and pack up Nancy’s car! It was an enjoyable afternoon of bonding with fellow Friends members, interacting with appreciative parents and kids, and experiencing first-hand a record-breaking crowd at Buffington Park.

April 2026

Library Appreciation Week!

After the April membership meeting, Friends took a moment to share the joy they find in the BEST RURAL LIBRARY IN OREGON! (Betty Skinner said her joy in the library was her son, Library Director Jeremy Skinner, but he was too big for her to display!)

Photos were taken by Michelle Valentino 

The theme for this year’s National Library Week (April 19-25, 2026) was “Find Your Joy.” Over the past few years, our roving photographer, Michelle Valentino, has captured many instances of the Friends members and library users doing just that. To encourage broader participation in that effort, she made an appeal on Facebook for library visitors to submit photos of themselves “finding their joy at the library.” Everyone who submitted a photo by midnight April 26, was entered into a drawing for a $50 gift card of their choice. Michelle compiled the photos into a slide show to play in a continuous loop on the screen in the library lobby (see some of the photos below).

For younger patrons, artistic member Laura Lee Cundiff created a “peep board” featuring Spike, Biscuit  and a new library character, Sammy the Seal, which was placed in the lobby for more photo opportunities. Nancy Schassen created survey sheets for pre-school kids, as well as elementary school and middle/high school students to give feedback about the aspects of the library they most enjoy. She also commissioned and supervised the creation of the peep board.

Click on photos to enlarge and see captions about Friends members finding their joy at the library:

To show our appreciation for the library staff this year, the Friends will give each of them a present on their birthdays: a $50 gift card to a merchant of their choice, enclosed in birthday cards designed by local artists (and procured by Michelle Arnold). At each Friends’ meeting, the cards for the upcoming month’s birthdays will be passed around to the membership for signing, so we may all convey our appreciation and personal good wishes.”

February 2026

The Annual Book & Bake Sale

Friends volunteers sort hundreds of book donations

The ANNUAL BOOK & BAKE SALE held over Presidents’ Day weekend was a record-breaking success due to the outpouring of volunteer help by Friends’ members, book donations from the community, impeccable sorting, an outstanding selection of baked goods, and approximately 500 locals and tourists who shopped the four-day sale.

The Friends are indebted to the library staff who moved 25 tables, 19 panels, and over two hundred boxes of books from storage into the meeting hall the week before the event.  A hard-working set-up group arrived Saturday, Feb. 7th to haul and arrange tables, grid, table dividers, black panels, and 100+ signs in the meeting hall.

Photos were taken by Michelle Valentino

Click on photos to enlarge and see captions:

Forty-two volunteers showed up Monday-Wednesday (Feb. 9-11), 10 a.m.-2 p.m. to unpack the boxes, and meticulously sort all the books, DVDs, CDs, and puzzles. The extraordinary effort by this self-driven group of Friends paid off by making the sale super shopper-friendly. Several customers commented on how easy it was to locate books.

The Bake Sale portion of the event was chaired by the unflappable Midge Piland. She and her volunteer crew packaged and labeled an unbelievable selection of donated home-baked goodies. This year, our extraordinary volunteer bakers outdid themselves with delicious treats, including strudels, shortbread, Amaretti chocolate drops, Nanaimo bars, mini-carrot cakes, espresso chocolate truffles, fruit filled pastries, pecan bars, chocolate cherry cupcakes, ginger snaps, macaroons, salted chocolate chip cookies, granola, peanut butter chocolate kisses cookies, gluten-free items, and even some healthy home-baked doggie biscuits. The baked goods…which customers paid for with generous donations…were beautifully displayed in professional bakery packaging, and brought in a staggering 33% of the event’s total income. It’s a good thing our customer base and volunteers have a sweet tooth!

During the sale itself, Friends members kept the books neat and tidy for easy shopping, totaled the number of books ready for checkout, cashiered, hauled books to cars for customers, sold baked goods, and photographed the event. These volunteers provided smiling faces and great customer service, making the shopping experience enjoyable for all our customers.

After the last customer left at noon on Monday, February 16th, fifteen energetic, self-directed volunteers made short work of packing up the 41 boxes of left-over books for transport to Goodwill in Brookings, returning the tables and grid to storage, breaking down cardboard boxes and clearing the meeting hall in preparation for a full roster of meetings the following day (including the Friends’ meeting!).

The ANNUAL BOOK & BAKE SALE is the Friends’ most labor-intensive fundraiser of the year. We are totally indebted to the FORTY-TWO volunteers who generously spent a good chunk of time at the library working before, during and after the sale, and the NINETEEN bakers who…over the past three years…have created an avid fan-base. All the hard work paid off. The event raised a record-breaking $5,600.00!

November 2025

Holiday Better Books & Bake Sale

Click on photos to enlarge and see captions:

Photographs were taken by Michelle Valentino & Sandy Grummon

This year’s two-day HOLIDAY BETTER BOOKS & BAKE SALE raised a whopping $2,110.65…only $64.00 short of beating last year’s record-breaking total.

Based on last year’s stunning Bake Sale results, co-chairs, Terry & Craig Shannon, once again asked customers to pay for baked goods by DONATION. The Bake Sale side of the event raised a record-breaking $1,356.00. We not only have a loyal group of repeat customers, the people in our community love our library, demonstrating their support with super-generous donations for baked goods.

The Shannons did an outstanding job recruiting (shanghaiing??) fifteen Friends bakers who delivered an unbelievable assortment of mouthwatering goodies…sourdough bread, strudels, pecan bars, ginger snaps, chocolate zucchini muffins, holiday biscotti, chocolate cherry cupcakes, pineapple upside down cupcakes, blueberry spice cupcakes, chocolate pumpkin Bundt cake, salted chocolate chip cookies, sugar lemon cookies, oatmeal raisin cookies, chocolate chip cookies, no-bake chocolate cookies, macaroons,  peppermint bark, pistachio/parsnip cake, brownies, white chocolate blondies, chocolate espresso truffles, several gluten-free items…and even dog biscuits. OMG!! All of these baked goods had to be individually packaged, labeled and displayed. Terry and Craig appreciated that many of our bakers collected bakery boxes and bags at our last Friends’ meeting and did their own packaging at home, saving time during the early morning rush when all the baked goods were delivered to the library. When everything was prepped by the kitchen elves, it was beautifully displayed to appeal to the sweet tooth of our customer base.

The Book Sale side of the event was chaired by Sandy, who could not have done it without the enthusiastic, hardworking, take-charge cadre of booth setter-uppers, book sorters, cashiers, and tearer-downers/cleaner-uppers! Gift-quality book donations were not as plentiful as in past years, which we attributed to folks using electronic devices to download books…a scary trend for Friends’ book sales. We did have a large selection of just-like-new KIDS’ BOOKS in the sale, which were carefully sorted to make it easy for youngsters and parents to shop. The adult fiction books were sorted by authors’ last names, and non-fiction was expertly sorted into categories (i.e., biographies, history, art/music, etc.). The meticulous sorting & signage contributed to selling 111 adult books and 248 kids’ books, raising a total of $754.65.

Holding the sale in the library lobby is a great venue, as almost everyone who comes into the building loves both books and goodies…especially our Friends members. We are our BEST customers!

October 3, 2025

“Just Desserts Auction”

Kitchen Crew prepping charcuterie cups, beer & wine, and Trivia chocolate truffle prizes

Betty, Ali, Chair Terry, Carolyn, Midge, and Anne (missing from photo: Carol and Kori)

Click on photos below for captions and to enlarge:

Photos were taken by Michelle Valentino and Phil Arnold

The Friends hosted their “Just Desserts Auction” on Friday, October 3rd, featuring thirteen dangerously delicious desserts created by eleven outstanding bakers (including two Friends members, Craig and Dianne…YEAH!). We are so fortunate these talented, passionate, culinary educated and/or experienced bakers are library supporters!

A plexiglass display case was erected to protect the pastries from up-close scrutiny and inadvertent sneezes. Carrie Crook created and donated a huge, gorgeous bouquet which was the focal point of the display. Craig and Ali worked their magic with scrunched up table cloths, pedestals, and miniature lights to transform the display into a “twinkle town” of desserts.

Terry, chair of the appetizer side of the event, rallied the troops to make 200 charcuterie cups…little works of art using fruit, veggie, meat & cheese, all cheese, or nuts to fill the Friends’ logoed charcuterie cups. Terry also assembled an enthusiastic cadre of volunteers to plate the hors d’oeuvres and clean up the kitchen afterwards.  Ali and Kori bartended all night, serving complimentary wine (provided by Carl), Arch Rock Beer, sparkling ciders and bottled water. They must have done a fantastic job because they made $48.00 in tips!

Sergio Martinez, local Theater Arts teacher at GBHS, returned as auctioneer-extraordinaire. He raised bids and donations to $4,950, including $700.00 for Janee Lensing’s Lemon Tart! Jeremy hosted Trivia questions identifying original book covers by titles and authors’ names. Correct answers were rewarded with chocolate truffles, delivered by Anne.

The Dessert Auction is one the Friends most entertaining and fun fundraisers…something we look forward to all year.

August 2025

Friends fund Kids’ Room improvements

Click on photos below for captions and to enlarge:

After the Friends meeting on Tuesday, August 19th, Jeremy led members on a tour of the Kids’ Room, highlighting recent purchases our group has funded. He started with the new enclosure for the library’s tortoise, Spike. He explained relocating Spike’s home, which now occupies a much smaller footprint than the former enclosure, was the first necessary step in creating space for future changes. Jeremy showed us other improvements the Friends have recently purchased for the Kids’ Room…colorful new signage for all the picture books, the vibrant new rug, and the new washer/dryer purchased with a generous donation to the Friends by Craig and Terry.

Website Work Group

Work Group

George Converse has an extensive programming background and is the technical lead of the Website Management Work Group. George, Ali Van Otterloo, Bryan Grummon, Jeremy Skinner, and Sandy Grummon took the training course from the Friends’ website designer, Anneliese Dehner. Updating the website on a monthly basis was a group effort from May 2016 through September 2016, but once everyone was comfortable with the WordPress software, tasks were allocated to each Work Group member. Since 2019, Ali and Sandy have updated and tweaked the site on a monthly basis, posting current agendas, minutes, treasurer’s reports, and photos from recent Friends’ events.

Grant Writing

Work Group

Nine members of the Grant Writing Work Group (Judi Collins, Sandy Grummon, Bryan Moe, Nancy Rogers, Terry Shannon, Jeremy Skinner, Phoebe Skinner, and Mary Uhlir) have attended a 20 hour “Learn By Doing Grant Writing Workshop,” and the Friends have applied for several grants since 2015, receiving funding amounting to $395,910.

To view grants from 2023, click below
Grants 2023

To view grants from 2022, click below
Grants 2022

To view grants from 2021, click below
Grants 2021

To view grants from 2020, click below
Grants 2020

To view grants from 2019, click below
Grants 2019

To view grants from 2018, click below
Grants 2018

To view grants from 2017, click below
Grants 2017

To view grants from 2016, click below
Grants 2016

To view grants from 2015, click below
Grants 2015ffington