Spelling Bee

Volunteer Kick-Off Meeting

Sunday, May 5

2:00 – 3:30 p.m.

Edison Main Library
340 Plainfield Avenue

The Friends of the Library Need Your Help!

As you know, we had to cancel our very popular town-wide Spelling Bee for 2013 because we did not have enough volunteers to help with the numerous planning and organizational activities that are needed. Determined to hold the event once more in spring 2014, we’ve come up with a fun and exciting way for you to help us achieve that goal.

On Sunday, May 5, from 2:00 pm-3:30 pm, in the meeting room at the Edison Main Library, 340 Plainfield Ave. (directions), we will have a special Spelling Bee Volunteer Kick-Off Meeting. We are looking for people with all interests, abilities, and availability to help us plan and prepare for our 2014 Spelling Bee. Even if you can only offer us a small amount of time from home, we’d love to see you at our kick-off event. Everyone is welcome. You do not need to be a Friends member to attend.

After a general introduction, you will be able to find out more about what is required for areas in which you may be interested. Organized somewhat like a job fair, we will have several tables with an experienced volunteer at each. They will explain the many activities we need help with in such areas as publicity, prizes, sponsors, registration, volunteer organization, signage, logistics, programs, etc. The Friends of the Library will provide light refreshments.

If you have any questions, or if you are unable to attend but would still like to help in some way, please e-mail us at FOLEdisonNJ@gmail.com or call Graham at 732-738-4586.

You can print off a flyer for the event here. (PDF)

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The Friends of the Edison Public Library will hold its monthly board meeting on Wednesday, April 3, in the large meeting room of the Edison Main Library on Plainfield Ave., Edison, NJ

Meeting starts at 7pm ET.

This is an open meeting. All members or prospective members welcome. We would love your input!

Contact foledisonnj@gmail.com or call 732-738-4586 for more details.

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Saturday, April 6
2:00 pm

North Edison Branch Library
777 Grove Avenue (Directions)

BOUND FOR AMERIKAY

The Irish Emigrant Experience:
Coming to America as told through Music, Song & Story

Performed by

McDermott’s Handy

Kathy DeAngelo and Dennis Gormley

Singing and playing harp, tin whistle, and other period instruments

What must it have been like? How did it feel to leave everyone and everything that is familiar to go off to a fabled land of freedom with streets paved with gold and untold wealth and opportunity? What was it like—that journey to America?

Telling the emigrants’ story from the Irish viewpoint, Kathy and Dennis share their stories through their songs.

This is the story of every ethnic group who struggled in their homeland against political upheaval and repression, endured grinding poverty and racial or religious persecution to build a new life in America and something better for their children. They were happy to leave. They were heartbroken to leave. They were mostly young. And it was not easy when they got here. They toiled and worked at the dangerous jobs or the ones that nobody wanted, all in the hope of building a future.

This is a FREE program sponsored by The Friends of the Edison Library.
Advanced registration is required.
Reserve your seat by calling 732-548-3045, ext. 1,
online at www.lmxac.org/edisonlib (clicking on Programs and Displays), or
sign up at the library circulation desk

More Details on the Calendar page

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The Friends of the Edison Public Library will hold a Spring Book Sale at the North Edison Branch Library, 777 Grove Avenue, Edison on Saturday, April 20, 10 a.m. – 4 p.m., and Sunday, April 21, 12 noon – 4 p.m. The annual Fall Book Sale scheduled for last November was canceled because of Superstorm Sandy and was rescheduled to April.

Thousands of books in many categories were sorted and boxed in the fall, but in advance of the April sale the Friends will accept children’s books and recent fiction and popular nonfiction in excellent condition, which can be contributed through Monday, April 1. Volunteers are also needed, both for the event itself and for other activities before and after the sale. If you would like to volunteer or donate books, please contact us using the Contact page or e-mail us at FOLEdisonNJ@gmail.com.

Be sure to save the dates of April 20 and 21 to shop at the Friends’ book sale and browse paperback and hardcover books in your favorite fiction categories, mystery, romance, suspense, sci-fi and general fiction, as well as non-fiction and children’s books.

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The Friends of the Edison Public Library will hold its monthly board meeting on Wednesday, March 6, in the large meeting room of the Edison Main Library on Plainfield Ave., Edison, NJ

Meeting starts at 7pm ET.

This is an open meeting. All members or prospective members welcome. We would love your input!

Contact foledisonnj@gmail.com or call 732-738-4586 for more details.

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We have some good news and some not so good news about our very popular annual town wide Spelling Bee. First, the not so good news: It is with great regret that we have to announce that we will not be able to hold the Bee in 2013. This is mainly because we currently have fewer volunteers than are needed to take part in the months-long planning and preparations. We understand that this will be disappointing for children and their parents. For the past two years, we have been thanked by many people for running the event and told what a good thing it is for Edison. We are also conscious of the fact that we have gained a degree of momentum and canceling the Bee was not a decision we took lightly.

The good news is that we have not given up on the Spelling Bee. The Friends of the Edison Public Library hope to bring back the competition in 2014, and make it even better than past Bees. We’ve already had some ideas to improve it, and we will continue discussions. As a reminder to you that we haven’t forgotten, we’ll still be including our fun Spelling Bee words feature in The Friends Pages of The Library Letter, the quarterly newsletter you can pick up at Edison’s libraries.

If we’re to hold the Spelling Bee in 2014, we need your help. The day itself involves a lot of work by our wonderful volunteers; however, many more hours of work are needed in order to plan and prepare during the several months leading up to the day of the Bee. Some of the aspects of the advance planning include: the venue and its facilities; word list creation and review; publicity, including designing, producing flyers and distributing them to schools; reviewing the rules of the event; prizes; obtaining sponsors; registration; organizing the registration packets for contestants; volunteer management; planning the timeline for the day; creating the program; writing scripts for the MC; and post-event publicity. We are planning to hold an event, similar in format to a job-fair, where anyone interested in helping us can learn a little about what we need, then find out more details about any areas in which they have an interest. Watch this space for an announcement. If you think you could spare even a little time to help us with some of these tasks, please e-mail us at FOLEdisonNJ@gmail.com or call Graham on 732-738-4586.

2012 Division 2 winners (from L-R): 1st Ashwath Subramanian, 2nd Dayashree Baskaran and 3rd Vanessa Hu respectively.

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The Friends of the Edison Public Library will hold its monthly board meeting this Wednesday, Jan 2nd, in the large meeting room of the Edison Main Library on Plainfield Ave., Edison, NJ

Meeting starts at 7pm ET.

This is an open meeting. All members or prospective members welcome. We would love your input!

Contact foledisonnj@gmail.com or call 732-738-4586 for more details.

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It is with great regret that we have to announce the cancellation of our Fall book sale which was due to take place this weekend, November 3 and 4. This is due to Hurricane Sandy and its aftermath. We hope to announce a new date for the sale at some point in the future.

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Our apologies to anyone who has contacted us regarding book donations, volunteering, etc. With the impending approach of Sandy, we are in MAJOR book moving mode. This would normally be our busiest week anyway, but with Mon-Wed being potentially unavailable to us, we’re having to do everything quickly.

At this point, we’re expecting the book sale next weekend to go ahead. If the worst came to the worst and there was no power at the library over the weekend, we would have to reschedule at some point when the room was available to us. We’ll do our best to keep you posted!

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