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I'm gonna start recording. Can I have your name please? Mike and mike. How long have you been coming to the Freeman library? Well I've been coming to the library since it was opened but for the last 3.5 years I've been volunteering in the Friends of the

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Freeman bookstore that supports the library activities. So what do you do for the Friends of Freeman? Like when you come in to volunteer for them? Walk us through your day? Well it's sorting the books that we get as donations that we can either put out in

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the bookstore for sale or we'll put online to sell some books or some that will put out in the free card. The whole idea of being to raise money for supportive activities at the library that the library budget itself may not be able to handle. Um

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And what got you interested in volunteering with the Friends of Freeman? Well as an ex english major and an incurable romantic and I was an avid reader. Being able to work in a library and bookstore is heaven when you retire. So I've enjoyed it. I've met

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a lot of fine people here both within the library itself, staff and patrons galore coming into look for something to pique their interest. Um Is there a favorite part of what you do with the Friends of Freeman? Like one thing you just can't wait to come

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back to pretty much every day right to do. Um I enjoy sorting with the books and looking at helping people who come into the bookstore look for books that um they think they might like or finding out what their interests are and trying to make some

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other suggestions? That's part of the joy of coming in with the donations, you get everything and sometimes run across gems that you never knew existed. Um Other times just the the particular title of a book will pique your interest and suddenly find that you're taking something

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home to read, that you never would have picked up on your own before. I used to work at a bookstore. And is it dangerous doing what you do like do you come home? Yes, it is. Before I joined the bookstore staff here, my wife made me

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promise that for however many books I brought home, I had to get rid of that many books at home. Otherwise we've been inundated. Have you been able to held onto that promise? Pretty well most of the time. Is there a good foul find that you found

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anything that sticks out in particular? Oh Well I'm an old movie buff and especially movies made in the 30s and the 40s. And I ran across a book basil Rathbone who played Sherlock Holmes in Countless movies and was a Shakespearean actor wrote one book, a biography

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autobiography in 1962. And I not only found a first edition of that in the the donations, but it was signed by the author. That that's cool. Good stuff. That's pretty amazing. How often do you come to? Do you come to the library outside of your volunteer

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hours you come in or when you come in? Do you also check out the library as well? It's pretty much a straight forward to the book store and then you go home. It's a little bit of everything. I'm in the library itself or in the bookstore

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officially three mornings a week and I'll find myself coming in to participate in whatever activities that the library itself is setting up, Whether it's uh lectures in the afternoon or sometimes in the evening. Um, it's also fun to help the library stuff. The library staff set

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up things themselves. They're a good bunch of people who work with. Is there as a patron? Is there a particular program that sticks out to you or activity that we do that you want to promote or the Children's reading program are wonderful to see. Um, it's

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great to see those little kid's eyes light up when they come in. And also the english language programs have been great for um, people I've known who are recent immigrants to the US who need the work and appreciate the opportunity. Um, see what else there. So

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I know that the friends are always looking for volunteers with the bookstore. Did you want to do like a little p s a commercial to talk about and how like to, if you were to tell someone, hey come to volunteer or help out with friends of

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Freeman donate or anything like that, anything you want to say on camera. Um, Well, as I mentioned earlier, the, the friends of the Freeman bookstore is there to accept donations, which we go through and sell in the bookstore to help support funds going to support the

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activities here at the library. We're always looking for donations. Um, we're always looking for volunteers to help with manning the bookstore, staffing this bookstore for hours during the day. And we've also got openings on the library board or the Friends of the Freeman library board, um,

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for activities that help us with our fundraising and outreach. And if you've got any interest in, in books in uh, video activities, film activities. You've got expertise in marketing or um, customer service come in and talk to us. We'd love to have you come on board.

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Um, let's see what else. There's um, I have to modify your questions a little bit because I already asked the same question and I want to get different perspectives of trying to modify the questions. Um, I think I already asked like what drew you to volunteer

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in the bookstores. Right. Was it someone, did someone come talk to you specifically and recruit you or just an opportunity that you stumbled upon? Well before I retired, my wife told me I had to have a list of 10 things to do to occupy my time

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before I was actually allowed to retire. And a good friend of ours was already volunteering here within the library was on the library board and knowing my liberal arts background thought that might be a good fix. And so she talked me into coming in and I

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haven't left since. Um I know you're on the you're on the board right so you might have knowledge about insider knowledge. Is there a particular programs that the friends fun that you're really proud of to help motivate you with the work you do or anything like

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that. Um The digital media labs have been incredible. The opportunities for people to come in and take material to sort of make movies, the three d printer that's been in use for the last few years. We helped to support and um activities that are sort of

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outside the norm of just coming into getting a book brings all sorts of people in and then at the same time we hope they also get a book when they're here anything. I think that's pretty much I have about eight minutes of footage and you won't

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be able to use any. I already got some good soundbites already but any I guess I'll ask you more on the patron side just in case I might you might have some good input um as a patron to the library. Have you visited other libraries beside

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Freeman before? Um Yeah back in the old days when we were the Freeman library was across the parking lot in the old building. It wasn't all that user friendly. And we used to do a lot of, they spend a lot of time with library down in

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Lincoln city and when the new facility opened up here and it was not only access to space, but changes in programming ideas, uh general attitude of the people here remark markedly changed and we find ourselves coming over here frequently. Um the exclusion of any other library

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around. So as someone who's been going to the library, a good chunk of his life, have you noticed a shift or change maybe Freeman specifically? Or maybe library in general? Um like has, how has the library purpose or function in the community have shifted have changed?

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Have you noticed any of that? Um Well, libraries having to deal with changes in society in the old days, people used to come to libraries because of the books and because of the research that was done, a lot of it is done online. Now, a lot

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of people don't even read books anymore. They're getting everything from the computer. And for those that aren't that comfortable with paper format, we need to be able to draw them in. And the libraries instituted all sorts of programs to try to bring in the people that

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are more comfortable with a keyboard than with a leather and paper book. And that's good to see you. And then um it's also good in the sense that um it's providing avenues for people that don't have the access to computers into uh multimedia at home, so

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they're not excluded from the experience that can come in and use the facilities here. Anything else you might want to add? I think I run out of my prepared questions. I didn't prepare that many questions. Yeah. I have not yet run into a program here that

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I couldn't recommend um to anybody that had any interest. But I will particularly say that whenever they have anything to do with food here come they've got some great cooks here and that's thanks to the generous donation of the Friends of Freeman. Right, because you guys

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help help with that. So it's awesome. Thank you, mike. Thank you.