Friends of Houston Public Library

What a great opportunity to support the Houston Public Library system! Volunteering at the Friends of HPL warehouse on Saturdays provides opportunities for individuals to support the good works of HPL. Libraries seem to be one of the first departments to experience budget cuts, but one of the most needed. Once you experience this volunteer opportunity, you will be "hooked".

It is gratifying to support an institution as important to the community as the public library and, at the same time, satisfy my own interests in working with books, socializing with others who have similar interests, and feeling the satisfaction of accomplishing a task each time I volunteer. There are a number of volunteer opportunities and the more you volunteer, the more you will learn about the Friends and the more you can contribute to their mission of supporting the library. And it is fun!

I am a board member and a warehouse volunteer and am also in charge of the annual Children's Book Sale. There are numerous opportunities to volunteer with the Friends of the Houston Public Library. If you're a book lover - or if you just like seeing immediate progress on any number of projects - you should check out what the Friends of HPL has to offer.

I volunteer with the Friends of the Houston Public Library because I am a big believer in the importance of libraries and the great work HPL is doing, especially with literacy, helping people to build job skills and find jobs (online, etc.) and I watch the pure joy of my 3 and 5 year old every time they visit the local branch. Houston/Texas doesn't fund libraries at near the level of other large communities, which makes the extra financial support the Friends provide through book sales very critical. The Friends are in a period of exciting growth and change, so we are ready both for people looking to put in a few hours every month or so, as well as people looking to grow into volunteer leadership positions over time!

I've volunteered a few times at the Friends warehouse and have really enjoyed it! The work at the warehouse is all related to processing the books that the groups sells to raise money for the library. The process of scanning books to be listed on Amazon was easy to learn - I was pitching in after 10 minutes of training. Folks were really nice, too. I'll be back!