Original article published in the Mower County Independent, Thursday, May 22, 2025. Reprinted with permission and gratitude.
By Gretchen Mensink Lovejoy
Spring Valley’s library board of trustees met last Thursday, May 15 to manage business before the busyness of summer.
Spring Valley Public Library (SVPL) Director Melissa Vander Plas requested that the board consider allotting paid work hours for summer help to offset employee vacations, noting that a volunteer has already committed to being on hand for part of the season, and she would like to retain and pay that volunteer for additional hours as the children’s summer reading program progresses. The board passed a unanimous vote in favor of setting aside money for that purpose.
The director related that library assistant Jeanette Ramaker is “leading the organization of the summer reading program,” this year themed “Ignite Your Imagination at the Library.” Special presentations are slated for Wednesday afternoons at the library in June and July at 1:30 p.m. More information will be available on the library’s Facebook page and throughout the library, as well as in the Mower County Independent.
Vander Plas shared in her director’s report that the new Evergreen library operating system has been put into service. “The transition went pretty well – not without its glitches, but much better than it could have been. We are able to perform most of our day-to-day operations with a few patron records and item records needing to be updated when some of the data didn’t transfer over correctly.” She cited that during the days that the library was still open but not functioning using the new system, library staff spent time cleaning and rearranging SVPL’s collections – “moving the children’s DVDs into their own section for easier and safer browsing for kid-friendly selections.” “Also, we have a Father’s Day card-making workshop for kids on June 7.”
The Friends of the Spring Valley Public Library held a book sale on April 26, garnering $900 for SVPL’s benefit, and members followed up with a garage sale to bring in more money to assist the library’s mission. Vander Plas stated that the Friends “will be helping us with summer reading programs as support, and they’ll be collecting prizes for our drawings…they’re just a valuable resource.”
Donations and memorials for which the board expressed its gratitude included gifts to the SELCO Foundation from Harlan and Pat Bucknell, Stuart and Carol Gross in memory of Dorothy Simpson, Deanna Capelle in memory of Wayn Dreyer, from Ethel Marchant, Carol Himle, and Laura Mangan, Adopt-A-Book donations from Char O’Connor, Friends of the Spring Valley Public Library, Deb Hagen-Moe, Stephanie Vreeman, Jennifer Terbeest and Nicole Pokorney, an anonymous donor giving to the city’s library fund in memory of Roberta Flaherty, the Osterud-Winter Trust Fund’s biannual gift to the library fund, Char O’Connor’s memorial honoring Russ Betsinger, and gifts to the library’s contingency fund from Rita Hartert and from Narcotics Anonymous participants who hold meetings at the library. Vander Plas remarked that “we’ve had donations totaling a little over $2,500 since the beginning of the year,” and she wanted to thank everyone who has contributed to the library’s wellbeing as a community resource.
The library will be closed Monday, May 26 in observance of Memorial Day, and its June board meeting will be held on Tuesday, June 17 at 6:00 p.m. instead of the usual third Thursday due to that being Juneteenth, a national holiday. The meeting schedule will resume in July, and the board will not meet again until September because it takes a break in August for Ag Days.
The Spring Valley Public Library is open Monday from 10:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m., Tuesday through Thursday from noon to 7:00 p.m., Friday from 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., and the first and third Saturdays of each month from 10:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. The library staff is available to assist with media inquiries and library questions. For more information, stop in at the library on Jefferson Street, just behind First National Bank, or call 507-346-2100.
Courtesy of the Mower County Independent, 135 E Main St. LeRoy, MN 55951, (507)-324-5325