President's Welcome

Tuesday, April 16, 2013

Friends of the Library Annual Banquet

What makes a really good library even better? In the case of the Mary Couts Burnett Library, it is the Friends of the TCU Library. Each year the Friends support the Library with special purchases for the collections, for the staff, or for the facilities. In recent years the Friends provided funding for the purchase of C-19, a key database that indexes nineteenth century literature, funding for Information Commons furniture, and funding for a Konica color digital book scanner. The scanner enables staff to scan oversized books, maps, posters and scanning of fragile, older books. The Friends provide funding for the Library Staff Excellence Award given in January of each year at a staff luncheon.

The Friends have a long history of funding rare book purchases with a recent one being Vindiciae Carolinae: Or, a defence of Eikon Basilike, printed in London in 1692. This work is a chapter-by-chapter reply to John Milton’s Eikonoklastes (1649). A rare find indeed! The Friends continue to underwrite the annual Friends of the Library Banquet, sponsoring a presentation and visit by a nationally known author to the TCU campus each year. In more recent years, the Friends support the bi-annual Texas Book Award, a prize given to the best book about Texas. Founded in 1972, the Friends of the TCU Library have enriched our campus with their generosity. They make a really good library even better!