Library will try a gifts raffle to raise funds

W. TERRY SMITH

Do you feel lucky?

If so, you may want to head on over to Edgecombe Memorial Library in Tarboro or the branch at Pinetops.

With a little luck, you may be able to pick up a Christmas gift or two.

Both libraries are selling raffle tickets for gifts. You can begin buying tickets Tuesday. The drawings begin on Dec. 8 and continue until Dec. 23, 12 business days. That’s why they are calling this the “Twelve Days of Christmas Raffle.”

Chances are $1 each or six for $5, said Carol Hayes, who along with Elaine Cannon of the Pinetops branch, came up with the idea to help raise money for the library. Five hundred tickets are available at each library.

“These funds will be used to buy audio books,” Library Director Roman Leary said. “The money raised in Tarboro will stay in Tarboro; the money raised in Pinetops will stay in Pinetops.”

The raffle holds promise because of the generosity of local merchants, Cannon and Hayes said.

Tarboro, for example, has 26 gifts, which means the lucky daily winner will receive two gifts each, “at least a $50 value,” Hayes said. “Everybody was very willing.”

Tarboro gifts vary from t-shirts to coffee to barbecue sauce to massages to cash to gift cards.

Pinetops gifts vary from gift cards and gift certificates to cash and various products, Cannon said.

“Trust me,” she said. “We have some very nice prizes. We have 29 and we still expect some more to come in. The merchants bent over backwards for us.”

When Hayes isn’t soliciting gifts for the library raffle, she is the story time reader. Cannon, a student at Edgecombe Community College, is a part-time library assistant.

“They have done a first-class job getting this set up,” Leary said.

The library also is in the midst of a fund-raising effort to raise money for its children’s department. So far, $780 has been donated to “Branching Out for Creativity.” It will be used for children’s programs, children’s department supervisor Brian Everett said.

And last month, the Friends of the Library raised $820 with “An Evening of Edgar Allan Poe,” with Leary performing Poe’s “The Tell-Tell Heart.” That money will be used to purchase DVDs.

The continuous in-house book sale has raised $1,200 through October.

The library is closed today for what Leary has termed “a major upgrade in our whole computer system” plus training.