Leisure Reading

Mountaineer Parents Club helps fill Leisure Reading Collection shelves

     A chemistry student takes a break from studying theorems to climb the stairs of the new Downtown Campus Library to the sixth floor.

     He pauses while searching the shelves for a new book to occupy his mind. Eureka. He found it.

     A comfortable mission-style chair in the corner of the Davis Reading Room offers him a picturesque view of Morgantown. The scene is set for a brief escape from pages of numbers and chemical equations to a John Grisham tale.

     The Leisure Reading Collection offers a unique dimension to the academic resources that fill the new library.

     "It truly is a leisure reading collection," Libraries Dean Frances O'Brien said. "It is predominately current fiction, the kind of thing you'd find on New York Times Best Seller List."

     Supported by the Mountaineer Parents Club, nearly 1,000 new book titles, including fiction, nonfiction and biographies, are available at the Downtown Campus Library and another 1,000 at the Evansdale Library.

After a tour of the Charles C. Wise Jr. Library a few years ago, Susan Hardesty, WVU Mountaineer Parents Club chair, began to contemplate how the Parents Club could play a role in the University's libraries.      The Leisure Reading Collection seemed a perfect fit. Hardesty explains that a parent could read a book that he or she find interesting or enjoyable and then donate it for students and others to read.

WVU Mountaineer Parents Club Chair Susan Hardesty, Dean Frances O'Brien and WVU President David C. Hardesty, Jr. stand in front of the Leisure Reading Collection on the sixth floor of the Downtown Campus Library.

     "Every parent who has donated a book feels they have directly contributed to the education of a student," Hardesty said.     

     Since its inception, parents have embraced the project and donated 1,750 books to the collection through the Parents Club. Donations have also come from individuals and other organizations.     

     Circulation records show that students, faculty and staff are adding books from the collection to their reading lists. O'Brien expected the popularity of such a collection to readers and donors. "When you send your son or daughter off to college, I'm sure you would be interested in something that would make their college experience a bit happier," O'Brien said.

     Guidelines require books be hardback and less than three years old. A constant flow of new books from the Parents Club and other sources allows librarians to regularly replace older books and ensures a current collection.

     Books can be donated through the chair of a Parents Club or at the new WVU Visitors Center at One Waterfront. Books donated through a Parents Club are eligible for bookplates.
Once retired from the Leisure Reading Collection, books are donated to the books Mon County Literacy Volunteers, a program that teaches adults to read.

Ex Libris is published quarterly by the WVU Libraries
P.O. Box 6069 Morgantown WV 26506-6069
www.libraries.wvu.edu
(304) 293-4040