Friends of the DeLand Library: The Next Life of a Well-Loved Book

A donated book enters the Louise Caccamise Friends Bookstore with very little ceremony. It may have been cleared from a shelf, inherited, finished once or carried through several homes. In the hands of the Friends of the DeLand Public Library, that object can be sold and converted into something the library could not otherwise purchase, host or try.

This is a pleasing local economy. One reader’s surplus becomes another reader’s inexpensive discovery. The small sale becomes support for lectures, discussions, exhibitions, children’s programming or another need. Value does not disappear when the first owner closes the cover. It changes form.

Public libraries carry serious obligations. They maintain collections, access, technology, staff, space and services for people with very different needs. Public budgets rightly demand rules. Yet some of a library’s most memorable contributions begin as a small experiment: an author visit, a concert, a new collection, a workshop or a partnership that no one could fully prove in advance.

A Friends organization can help create that room. Its money is important, but so is the attention its volunteers bring. Volunteers can notice an idea, raise support and help it happen without requiring the library to choose between that possibility and a core responsibility.

The seed library started with a local garden club is a beautiful example. Seeds are shared, grown and returned in the same spirit as books, but the knowledge travels through gardens, kitchens and conversations. A library becomes not only a place that stores information, but a place where information takes root.

Monthly sales bring people through the door for reasons that are pleasantly unscheduled. A visitor may be searching for a particular author, but used-book browsing rewards curiosity instead of efficiency. The person leaves with something unexpected and, perhaps, a better understanding that the library is supported by neighbors who have chosen to care for it.

The store’s name now honors Louise Caccamise after two decades of service as board president. That gesture says something important about volunteer institutions. Their public identity may sound collective, but continuity often depends on particular people who remember how things work, keep a promise for years and make room for others to join.

Twenty years is a substantial portion of a life to give to an institution. It includes the visible accomplishments and the ordinary work of returning, remembering, and helping things continue.

I appreciate that the store makes that contribution part of its identity. Someone arriving for a book encounters a name and, behind it, a story of local commitment. The shelves hold many authors; the room also honors the person who helped keep the opportunity available.

The Friends enlarge the library’s field of possibility. They supply volunteer attention, flexible support and a constituency ready to explain why the institution matters.

The extra possibilities are worth celebrating: another writer’s visit, another conversation, another reason for a person to feel that the library belongs in their life.

That quiet enlargement belongs beside the work of the West Volusia Historical Society and the cultural institutions gathered in Volusia County Stories.

The seed library is a fitting image to leave with. An idea moves into somebody’s hands and develops elsewhere. Books do that, too. The Friends help keep those beginnings circulating through DeLand.