The Kenai City Council unanimously enacted an ordinance that accepts and appropriates donations to the Kenai Community Library for the purchase of library materials. Monetary donations have been received through the Friends of the Kenai Community Library totaling $3,500.
$500 will be spent on behalf of the Pioneers of Alaska on large print books and other items to support the needs of the library users living with visual impairments. $3,000 will be spent on behalf of various doners on print and digital collection items, as well as supplies for the ‘Library of Things’ collection.
Library Director, Katja Wolfe, explains to the council what the ‘Library of Things’ collection is:
“These are items that are not traditionally found in libraries. We have computers that can be checked out. people can actually take them home, our board games and then we have the STEM kits. Those are all considered ‘library of things’ items.”
Council Member Henry Knackstedt said:
“I wanted to thank Katja for getting the grants and bringing them forward and the donations and also wanted to convey that over at the Senior Center, I talked about this at the last meeting, and they were pretty excited about it. It looked like something that would apply to a lot of the seniors as well as other folks, of course, here in the city.”
City Mayor Brian Gabriel said that accepting these donations to further the mission of the Kenai Community Library is in the best interest of the city and its residents:
“I just wanted to say, I appreciate your work here. As I get older, the kids tease me about the font on my iPhone because when I download a kindle book on my phone, I change the font, so it goes from 350 pages to like 3,500 pages. So, I do get this, and I appreciate that you’re looking out for us.”