Friends of The Colony Public Library

Friends of The Colony Public Library (FOTCPL) raises funds to enhance your library in its mission to best serve The Colony and surrounding communities. When the COVID-19 pandemic briefly shut down the Library the financial support of FOTCPL helped pay for safety essentials, add innovative outreach programs, and start a new Library project that with your backing can become a community resource to serve families for generations to come.
Safety was the first concern in the Library's response to COVID-19, and protective equipment including sneeze guards and sanitizing stations, was purchased along with personal protective gear necessary for librarians and staff to get back to work. While the Library was briefly closed to the public, a major sanitization process began to protect employees and to prepare for a gradual reopening that began in June of 2020. The Colony Public Library shifted services and offered 69 virtual programs, which were viewed by more than 7,000 people. Library staff packaged 2,600 take-home kits and delivered them to over 1,800 cars via curbside service. FOTCPL and all of you who support FOTCPL were team players and helped the Library achieve those awesome statistics.
In The Colony Public Library's Strategic Planning Survey, conducted during the Fall of 2020, residents expressed an interest in a digital media lab and creative technology equipment. A Digital Media Lab, a way to preserve your family's memories, is the target of this year's fund raiser.

Our Needs

In The Colony Public Library's Strategic Planning Survey, conducted in the Fall of 2020, residents expressed an interest in a digital media lab. One positive effect of the pandemic was a renewed appreciation of family coupled with a heightened interest in preserving family memories. A document scanner, initially rented and eventually purchased by FOTCPL enabled library staff and volunteers to begin the tremendous task of scanning the collection of The Colony newspapers. Newspapers are valuable sources of information for the family historian and the library is working hard to provide that digital resource. In addition to evidence found in newspapers families have photographs, home movies, documents, and more that combine to tell their story and those need to be preserved also. A digital media lab would include the flatbed document scanner we already own, with the addition of the adapters needed to read and convert old forms of data storage like VHS tapes, slides, cassettes, floppy disks, and more. The lab would be a do-it-yourself space where patrons would save and create digital shareable family histories. A lab could also contain other tools for media creation but at this point we are focusing on the Digital Media Lab concept. This activity is often reserved for those who can afford to invest in the equipment, and our goal is to offer this ability to everyone. Digital preservation requires expertise, and the library would offer both training and access to this equipment that is often difficult to understand, expensive, and for most people impractical to own.
Help us to help you build this valuable community resource that will benefit our community and your family for generations to come. Your generosity has already helped to purchase the scanner, the lion's share of the equipment budget. Join us as we continue to build the Digital Media Lab at The Colony Public Library.

Denton has a Legacy Lab. They do not have a video we can share but this site will explain what a Media Lab is and what our lab could look like: https://library.cityofdenton.com/screens/sc_legacylab.html. This link will show you the types of classes we may offer: https://memorylabnetwork.github.io/resources.html.

Other needs that would help us to better serve our community:
A Book Mobile
A LARGER LIBRARY!