HomeMy WebLinkAboutBetty Yarborough notesPicture of Mary Lib driving a front end loader into a big pile of dirt when they broke ground at the large library
Betty would like a copy
I went to Library school just for fun and the day I graduated the job fell in my lap. Somebody asked the Library School fell in my lap and the professor recommended me. Texas Women’s
University in Denton
4 kids, 3 in college
Children’s Librarian and Assistant Director
Went to work we were checking out vinyl records and audio cassettes
Still deciding between VHS and Beta tapes, got a small grant and bought 20 VHS tapes to circulate
Had to ask the Council for money for a special book case
How were books checked out?
Manually – when Libraries began to be automated, Fort Worth was not and Dallas was just starting. Small public libraries would never had a chance to be automated because it was too expensive
Grapevine Director (Janice) was riled up so Grapevine, NRH and ? persuaded the Councils to give several thousand dollars a piece and hired a programmed to develop your own automated
checkout system.
Had to handle every book and someone had to type all of the titles and information up. Very interesting process.
Book Cottage – Friends of the Library group, book sales, add some funds to the city budget, held in the library or at some facility
Used to haul books to North Hills Mall and for two days would have the book sale at the mall for $1 each or an encyclopedia for maybe $10 and could put the money into special programming.
The city purchased the property and it had small buildings, 2 bedroom, 2 bath homes that were built possibly after WWII. No one was living in them. The City let the Friends have one
of the homes for storage. 2-3 days a week volunteers would man the book cottage and it was an ongoing book sale. Public Works was very nice and would haul things over and we just had
to bake them cookies every now and again.
New building timing correlated with DFW Airport. Lots of building going on. The original Euless in inside the airport. Bringing growth everywhere.
October 1996 new building opened.