January 2022 Book Sale Cancelled

The Board of Friends of the Palo Alto Library has been closely monitoring news of the coronavirus in order to do what may be prudent for the health of our volunteers and sale attendees. The Santa Clara County Public Health Department continues to recommend keeping group gatherings small and to be particularly cautious around elderly and immunocompromised individuals and that was in the days before the winter holidays when the Omicron variant was still somewhat new.

The vast majority of FOPAL's volunteers are well over 50 and the same is probably true for our customers. The sale, especially on Saturday usually has a high concentration of people in very close proximity to each other. Therefore we have reluctantly decided to cancel our sale scheduled for January 8 and 9, which includes Main Room, Bargain Room, Children's Room and both later free nights.

 
News from the Library, by E-mail and RSS

By the time this newsletter goes out, the Library should be past its end-of-year holiday closings. You can read the Library's new-year news here.

If you have ever given the Library your e-mail address, like this newsletter editor did when he signed up for a Palo Alto Library card, you have probably noticed that they are sending you one to a few e-mails per month since the start of the pandemic.

If you haven't been getting these e-mails, and are curious, there's an archive of them here. The messages linked from the archive page have links to a subscription page.

If you prefer this sort of thing in your RSS reader instead of your e-mail, you can get the RSS feed here. (This may open in your RSS reader instead of in your browser.)

The City may also be sending you "Uplift Local" e-mails once a week or so. This week's mentions that the Library will be closing public access to the study rooms at Mitchell Park, Rinconada, and Downtown Libraries effective "tomorrow" which probably means January 7. That e-mail may be read here.

 
The Pandemic Is Making Things Weird

Yr hmbl newsletter editor is finding that the news of January's sale cancellation must get out before some other details beyond the sale dates are nailed down enough to publish. There will be another e-mail, likely this weekend and maybe even later Friday January 7. Sorry about that but I hope to have some better news in that one. -Frank McConnell

 
Donations

We have made it past Drop-off Donations 3.0 and have returned to accepting donations without the need to make an appointment.

HOWEVER....

We had already planned to pause accepting donations until January 10 while we prepared for the cancelled sale. Please hold your donations until then.

Please read our donation guidelines before you bring materials to us.

All that said, our normal hours for drop-off donations are Monday through Saturday, 3pm-5pm. (But not the week before the sale.)