Submitted by: Dorie Corrao
Vice President, Friends of the Belen Public Library
Manager, Books on Becker
With a dream of getting books into the hands of readers, especially children, and helping to support library programs, the Friends of the Belen Public Library opened a second-hand book store, Books on Becker, on August 4th. The store is a community project, supported by the Mayor and City Council of Belen and the Belen Public Library. The book store features lovely paintings from its non-profit neighbors at the Belen Art League. It has been set up and is operated by a hard-working and efficient group of dedicated volunteers. 513 Becker was a vacant building when the store opened, so creating the book store added new life to the renewal of downtown Belen. The six rooms are organized as follows: two rooms of fiction (divided into novels and crime/thrillers/mysteries―all of which are alphabetized by authors), two rooms of nonfiction (with multiple categories), children’s books, and middle school and young adult books. One of our next projects is a room to house our many paperbacks.
Children and teachers receive a free bag of books when they visit. The store is also working on an outreach program with local schools to encourage reading.
The books are diverse, often like new, and remarkably inexpensive. Funds from sales go toward library programs, specifically the children’s preschool Tales for Tots, teens’ activities, and the Summer Reading programs.
