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Lakewood Gifts Dozens of Books to The Summit Library
The Summit’s library boasts more than 1,500 books, separated out into fiction, non-fiction, biographical and large print. The community librarian, Hazel Harrison, said that without a doubt, the large print selection is the most popular.
“Several years ago, the Summit Library Committee started marking our large print books with a red dot on the spine. At that time, we had very few books in large print, but this simple red dot was very popular among the residents,” Hazel explained. “During 2021, we had more and more requests for the larger print, so we decided to concentrate on purchasing as many large print books as we could find. At the same time, we gathered all the large print books in our library and shelved them together apart from the regular fiction category.”
Lakewood resident Ann Smith knows a little something about building a library. When she started in March 2017, the Lakewood library had 80 large print books in a temporary space. Now the Ann R. Smith Library Center, which was dedicated to her in October 2020, has a nearly 1,800 large-print book collection that was donated by Ann.
When the Lifespire of Virginia team arrived at the Summit, Hazel said she was very proud to show off the community library. She mentioned the popularity of the large print books to Virginia Baptist Homes Foundation Vice President Jodi Leonard who then told Ann about their goal to boost the large print selection.
“The next thing I know I was picking up 14 bags of books that Ann wanted to donate to The Summit. It was a special moment for me to facilitate this unofficial ‘welcome to the family’ gift from one community librarian to another,” Jodi said. “We at Lakewood are happy to welcome The Summit into our LifeSpire of Virginia family,” said Ann. “I hope that the books will provide hours of pleasure to the residents. I always like to do whatever I can to help others enhance their lives.”
Of the donation, Hazel said she is still in awe and is incredibly grateful to Ann for her generosity. “I felt that it was too good to be true! The same day the books arrived we checked our card catalog and found that there were very few duplicates. Now, residents are very anxious for these new books to be on the shelves,” Hazel said.
Hazel said her next goal is to have a dedicated library room at The Summit. She said the committee is in the process of developing a database to manage the books. “Hopefully we can have a completely digital system in the future!”
This article was first published in LifeSpire of Virginia’s Community Matters magazine. Check out the rest of the e-book version online: https://bit.ly/3hSWUfP.