Happy New Year From FOCL! 

Time to renew your FOCL membership!

Dear Friends of Libraries,

While we continue to deal with the challenges created by Covid over the last 2 years, most of us have resumed the activities needed to support our libraries and communities. Friends of Connecticut Libraries (FOCL) is here to help you. Our mission to facilitate communication, collaboration and advocacy among Friends groups and libraries throughout the state is even more important at this moment. We invite you to join/renew your membership in FOCL, along with 100 other local Friends groups, individual library friends, library directors and organizations to support this effort.

Members can take advantage of FOCL’s centralized resources for Friends groups through:

• The FOCL website, www.foclib.org includes an extensive resource section about Friends topics, a listing of member groups, book sale information and a newly revised Friends Handbook which is a practical guide to establishing and maintaining your local Friends group.
• An active FOCL Facebook community.
• FOCL-Forum, an email listserv where you can ask questions, share information and post announcements.
• FOCL-Point, our newsletter, contains important news and ideas for Friends throughout the state.
• Events on topics of interest include a Fall Conference to be held November 2022.  More information to follow.  Recognition of outstanding individuals, groups and projects at FOCL’s annual awards meeting is planned for Spring 2023.
• Grants and consultations to Friends groups in need of organizational support.

We encourage you to go online to fill out your membership information and pay your dues at www.foclib.org/join-us . (If you need help logging in or have both a group and an individual membership, email friendsctlibraries@gmail.com.) If you prefer, you can go online and print/mail your membership form with payment to FOCL by October 15. For groups, this will ensure earlier inclusion of group information in our online directory and calendar. Individual donations may be tax deductible. 

Sincerely,

Linda Grayson

Membership Committee Chair
friendsctlibraries@gmail.com