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Friends of Corona Public Library urges council to boost book collection after strategic-plan survey
Summary
At the Corona City Council meeting, Mary Brownlow of the Friends of the Corona Public Library told the council that a 2024 resident survey and recent donations highlight remaining shortfalls in the library’s print and electronic collections and asked the council to increase funding.
Mary Brownlow, a member of the board of the Friends of the Corona Public Library, told the City Council during the communications-from-the-public portion of the meeting that a February 2024 survey of about 2,000 Corona residents produced a strategic plan identifying several needs for the city library.
Brownlow said outreach and awareness remain priorities and described the Friends’ volunteer-led outreach at city events and recent children’s programming. She said the Friends’ first annual ReaderCon in September drew 125 children to the library and that volunteers have worked events including the Summer Street Festival, Halloweekend and the tree-lighting to distribute free books and program information.
Brownlow also described efforts to make the library “more open and welcoming,” noting the library hosted music groups from six schools or city groups in the past year, staged three spring concerts and three holiday concerts, and purchased “dozens of new tables and hundreds of new chairs” for the library’s community room.
On the library’s holdings, Brownlow said the Friends donated about $30,000 for print books and about $35,000 for eMedia in 2024 but that the Corona Public Library “still falls short on the number of books we house.” She said the library ranks among the lowest in Southern California on books-per-population and asked the council to work with the Friends and the community to increase funding for books.
Brownlow closed by urging the council to address the shortfall “over the next few years,” and noted the Friends’ budget is not infinite.
The remarks took place during the communications-from-the-public segment; no formal council action on library funding was recorded in the transcript during this meeting.
