Our Volunteers Keep Us Cooking!

The Alachua County Library District is truly blessed to have an incredible number of people who are interested to donate their time and effort to work as volunteers. These people help to boost the level of support and service that librarians could never provide alone.


In 2010, the ACLD benefited from the assistance of 2,495 volunteers who worked 22,314 hours to help the library. The money their time and effort saved the library district equaled the cost it would have taken to employ approximately 10.5 full-time staff employees. 

The kind of work volunteers help with runs the gamut: re-shelving books, newspapers, and magazines; helping patrons with online services, teaching computer applications and homework tutoring for all manner of school subjects; assisting patrons write resumes and cover letters; preparing for and cleaning after program events; scanning, filing and doing other office related paperwork projects...the possibilities are endless.

These efforts certainly don't go unnoticed or under-appreciated by the library staff--and just to remind volunteers in a more formal way, the library district holds an annual Volunteer Appreciation Luncheon for all volunteers who provided their time and talent to the library during the year.

Each annual luncheon provides an opportunity for speakers from different library administrative departments and groups to offer their personal thanks and sentiments on why they appreciate the work volunteers do for the district. Typically, the program includes a brief speeches from the volunteer coordinator, the library district manager, and representatives from the governing board of directors, the Friends of the Library, the ACLD Foundation, and a guest speaker.

This year the guest speaker is local chef and restaurant owner Bert Gill. Gill is owner of four restaurants in Gainesville and an occasion guest chef on television news segments who provides viewers with cooking tips and recipes. At the library luncheon, Chef Gill would provide a live cooking demonstration, complete with an audio/video set-up that would provide the audience with an overhead view of his demonstration projected onto a large screen.

To promote the event, a theme was developed to focus on cooking and adopted the tagline: "Our Volunteers Keep Us Cooking!" Because Chef Gill cooked over open flame, we incorporated the use of flaming letters as the display font for the event print collaterals. The font was appropriately called "Flame." I also sourced for a public domain image of a flame that I could use in tandem with the lettering. It had been pre-determined prior to my involvement that a complimentary black apron emblazoned with the ACLD logo and tagline would be given out as a gift, so I adopted the apron as the central visual motif for the printed program.

I suggested that the door greeter should also wear a black apron to help further the visual theme connection between the life sized apron and the apron-shaped programs on the tables inside. We also discussed a bevy of possibilities for table center pieces, and in the end went with an understated and elegant floral arrangement and colour coordinated napkins of solid black, yellow, or red.

The promotional collaterals included:

Invitation: 360 3x4 inch invitations, printed 4-up on two sides of an 8.5x11 inch 110lb card stock sheet, then mailed or hand-delivered in colour coordinated envelopes.

Program: 200 3x8 inch single-folded 110lb card stock programs, printed on both sides and featuring a free-hand die cut in the shape of a cooking apron. The program was allowed to stand up on the tables at each place setting.

Table Seating Signs: 24 8x4 inch 110lb card stock table tents, printed on one side and double-folded into tent shape then placed on each table to indicate reservations for each library branch or combined department combination.

Welcome Sign: One 20x30 inch sign to be placed on an easel outside the doorway to the venue.

Of note: It took about two weeks to print and then trim by hand the 360 invitations and 200 programs. At 8 cuts per invitation and 5 cuts per program, plus hand trimming and assembling the poster and table tents, I made well over 2440 cuts with my trusty Xacto blade by the time I finished (that's about one cut for each volunteer, as it turned out!). All for you, volunteers! (and not even one volunteer used in the process).