The week of Oct. 21 is cause for a celebration. It’s National Friends of the Library Week, an opportunity to showcase the enormous contributions of our energetic, dedicated library volunteers. We applaud the 2,300 Friends’ members who donated more than 96,000 hours of their time to our libraries in 2011. Our library system simply could not survive without them.

Each of the nine Sarasota County libraries has established Friends organizations. Each is a separate nonprofit, 501(c)(3) organization, working in concert with our library system and the community.