New College Library Association Makes $100,000 Gift to Jane Bancroft Cook Library

The New College Library Association, which provides direct financial support to the Jane Bancroft Cook Library at New College of Florida, has made a $100,000 gift to the library.  The generous donation was based on the Library Association’s fundraising efforts during the 2008-09 fiscal year, which ended on June 30, 2009.

The funds will be used to continue to build the library’s extensive collection of books as well as other education materials, including CDs, videos and interactive media.

“In this day and age, with the various stresses on the state budget, the contributions of the New College Library Association are critical to sustaining the library and its high quality collection,” said Brian Doherty, who assumed the post of Dean of the Library on July 1.  “We need to keep growing the collection, especially in the arena of electronic information. This is very expensive to provide, but critical to our future. And because we are an academic library, we need to ensure that the collections are designed around the changing needs of the academic institutions that we serve.”

The Cook Library, named for benefactress Jane Bancroft Cook, currently holds about 250,000 volumes, including a small rare books collection, a Holocaust and Genocide Collection named for Holocaust survivor and educator Helen Fagin, and historical archives for both New College and USF. The library has access to a multitude of databases and electronic content online.  An expanded “Academic Resource Center and Information Commons” is currently under development, which will provide a wide range of resources for students.

“The Library Association is evolving to help meet the changing needs of new technology,” said NCLA board chair Chris Pfahler, a veteran community volunteer who has chaired many of the group’s fundraising events.  “We’re also trying to keep pace with the intellectual appetites of our students, which seem to grow every year. Just as you think the students couldn’t get more scholarly, they earn more extraordinary honors, such as our record eight Fulbright winners this past spring.”

Since its founding in 1964, the Library Association has donated more than $3 million to the Jane Bancroft Cook Library. Its signature social event, fashion show Pique-Nique sur la Baie, has raised significant funds, and its membership has been generous in its financial support of the library.

For more information about the New College Library Association, contact Margaret Boyd, Executive Director, at 941-487-4600.