notes: IF YOU'D LIKE TO MAKE A DONATION: Checks can be mailed to the following address: Friends of the Long Beach Public Library C/O Peter Psikogios 120 Shady Grove, Long Beach, MS 39560 FROM THE WEBSITE: On August 29, 2005, Category 4 Hurricane Katrina made landfall along the Central Gulf Coast near Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, but the devastation she caused would span three states and cost over $200 billion. Every city along the Gulf Coast of Mississippi would be affected by this storm. Most people would compare what they saw, or what they no longer saw to a "war zone". In Long Beach, where the majority of all businesses were located south of the railroad tracks that run through the neighboring towns, the tracks acted as a barrier to the wind and water, but they could not protect the majority of the homes and businesses closest to the beach. The Long Beach Public Library was just one of the many of these businesses who took a beating from the wrath of Katrina. When the south wall caved in from the pressure of the winds and water, the building received 3 1/2 feet of the Gulf's water throughout the first floor of the main wing and adjoining children's wing. Damage to the roof on the second floor of the main wing was fortunately slight as well as the only damage done to the second floor, and so the reference and non-fiction collection remained salvagable. But downstairs, aside from the tops shelves of the fiction section and some of the top shelves in the children's wing, all was lost. In late December, a librarian by the name of Cynthia Terwiliger from Polk County Library, North Carolina arrived with over 1000 books for the Long Beach Public Library. This campaign, orginally an idea of Long Beach evacuee, Jean Sneed, and the town librarian of Polk County, was designed to remake history ("The Long Beach Public Library traces it beginning to 1895 when a library was named for Mrs. Garland Ferguson, who donated 250 books to help start it."), preceeded all expectations and was a huge success for the library and its community. It was also the start of an out pouring of support from coast to coast in order to help the Long Beach Public Library. Although we are a long way from being where we were days before Hurricane Katrina, the Polk County Library and Lanier Library System of North Carolina placed a book plate in most of the books that they donated that reminds us that it will all be all right, because... "IT IS NEVER TOO LATE TO BEGIN RIGHT WHERE YOU ARE." -> Per email from the Reference Librarian at the Long Beach Public Library 8/2/07: "We have been in a FEMA trailer for the past two years, but we are moving back home in September. We are over run with books, but we still have specific needs for certain genres (large print, sci fi, biographies). I am sure we can use office supplies as well." ---------------------------------------------------- IF YOU'D LIKE TO MAKE A DONATION: Checks can be mailed to the following address: Friends of the Long Beach Public Library C/O Peter Psikogios 120 Shady Grove, Long Beach, MS 39560 ----------------------------------------------------- FROM THE WEBSITE: On August 29, 2005, Category 4 Hurricane Katrina made landfall along the Central Gulf Coast near Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, but the devastation she caused would span three states and cost over $200 billion. Every city along the Gulf Coast of Mississippi would be affected by this storm. Most people would compare what they saw, or what they no longer saw to a "war zone". In Long Beach, where the majority of all businesses were located south of the railroad tracks that run through the neighboring towns, the tracks acted as a barrier to the wind and water, but they could not protect the majority of the homes and businesses closest to the beach. The Long Beach Public Library was just one of the many of these businesses who took a beating from the wrath of Katrina. When the south wall caved in from the pressure of the winds and water, the building received 3 1/2 feet of the Gulf's water throughout the first floor of the main wing and adjoining children's wing. Damage to the roof on the second floor of the main wing was fortunately slight as well as the only damage done to the second floor, and so the reference and non-fiction collection remained salvagable. But downstairs, aside from the tops shelves of the fiction section and some of the top shelves in the children's wing, all was lost. In late December, a librarian by the name of Cynthia Terwiliger from Polk County Library, North Carolina arrived with over 1000 books for the Long Beach Public Library. This campaign, orginally an idea of Long Beach evacuee, Jean Sneed, and the town librarian of Polk County, was designed to remake history ("The Long Beach Public Library traces it beginning to 1895 when a library was named for Mrs. Garland Ferguson, who donated 250 books to help start it."), preceeded all expectations and was a huge success for the library and its community. It was also the start of an out pouring of support from coast to coast in order to help the Long Beach Public Library. Although we are a long way from being where we were days before Hurricane Katrina, the Polk County Library and Lanier Library System of North Carolina placed a book plate in most of the books that they donated that reminds us that it will all be all right, because... "IT IS NEVER TOO LATE TO BEGIN RIGHT WHERE YOU ARE."

notes: DONATIONS: Checks can be mailed to the following address: Friends of the Long Beach Public Library C/O Peter Psikogios 120 Shady Grove, Long Beach, MS 39560 FROM THE WEBSITE: On August 29, 2005, Category 4 Hurricane Katrina made landfall along the Central Gulf Coast near Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, but the devastation she caused would span three states and cost over $200 billion. Every city along the Gulf Coast of Mississippi would be affected by this storm. Most people would compare what they saw, or what they no longer saw to a "war zone". In Long Beach, where the majority of all businesses were located south of the railroad tracks that run through the neighboring towns, the tracks acted as a barrier to the wind and water, but they could not protect the majority of the homes and businesses closest to the beach. The Long Beach Public Library was just one of the many of these businesses who took a beating from the wrath of Katrina. When the south wall caved in from the pressure of the winds and water, the building received 3 1/2 feet of the Gulf's water throughout the first floor of the main wing and adjoining children's wing. Damage to the roof on the second floor of the main wing was fortunately slight as well as the only damage done to the second floor, and so the reference and non-fiction collection remained salvagable. But downstairs, aside from the tops shelves of the fiction section and some of the top shelves in the children's wing, all was lost. In late December, a librarian by the name of Cynthia Terwiliger from Polk County Library, North Carolina arrived with over 1000 books for the Long Beach Public Library. This campaign, orginally an idea of Long Beach evacuee, Jean Sneed, and the town librarian of Polk County, was designed to remake history ("The Long Beach Public Library traces it beginning to 1895 when a library was named for Mrs. Garland Ferguson, who donated 250 books to help start it."), preceeded all expectations and was a huge success for the library and its community. It was also the start of an out pouring of support from coast to coast in order to help the Long Beach Public Library. Although we are a long way from being where we were days before Hurricane Katrina, the Polk County Library and Lanier Library System of North Carolina placed a book plate in most of the books that they donated that reminds us that it will all be all right, because... "IT IS NEVER TOO LATE TO BEGIN RIGHT WHERE YOU ARE." -> IF YOU'D LIKE TO MAKE A DONATION: Checks can be mailed to the following address: Friends of the Long Beach Public Library C/O Peter Psikogios 120 Shady Grove, Long Beach, MS 39560 FROM THE WEBSITE: On August 29, 2005, Category 4 Hurricane Katrina made landfall along the Central Gulf Coast near Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, but the devastation she caused would span three states and cost over $200 billion. Every city along the Gulf Coast of Mississippi would be affected by this storm. Most people would compare what they saw, or what they no longer saw to a "war zone". In Long Beach, where the majority of all businesses were located south of the railroad tracks that run through the neighboring towns, the tracks acted as a barrier to the wind and water, but they could not protect the majority of the homes and businesses closest to the beach. The Long Beach Public Library was just one of the many of these businesses who took a beating from the wrath of Katrina. When the south wall caved in from the pressure of the winds and water, the building received 3 1/2 feet of the Gulf's water throughout the first floor of the main wing and adjoining children's wing. Damage to the roof on the second floor of the main wing was fortunately slight as well as the only damage done to the second floor, and so the reference and non-fiction collection remained salvagable. But downstairs, aside from the tops shelves of the fiction section and some of the top shelves in the children's wing, all was lost. In late December, a librarian by the name of Cynthia Terwiliger from Polk County Library, North Carolina arrived with over 1000 books for the Long Beach Public Library. This campaign, orginally an idea of Long Beach evacuee, Jean Sneed, and the town librarian of Polk County, was designed to remake history ("The Long Beach Public Library traces it beginning to 1895 when a library was named for Mrs. Garland Ferguson, who donated 250 books to help start it."), preceeded all expectations and was a huge success for the library and its community. It was also the start of an out pouring of support from coast to coast in order to help the Long Beach Public Library. Although we are a long way from being where we were days before Hurricane Katrina, the Polk County Library and Lanier Library System of North Carolina placed a book plate in most of the books that they donated that reminds us that it will all be all right, because... "IT IS NEVER TOO LATE TO BEGIN RIGHT WHERE YOU ARE."