The Library Times
Thanks To Her, You Can Now
Make Online Donations
Stacy Michaelsen at Pusher, Inc.
Our library has been struggling for many years to keep its doors open after the county cut off funding for all branch libraries. We’ve done this through the generous donations of library supporters, a local tax measure, and fundraising events.
And now a tech-savvy library supporter, Stacy Michaelsen, has recently added a new source of funding for our library: online donations.
Michaelsen is a website designer for the Dunsmuir-based digital media company Pusher Inc. She used her professional skills to create a website for the Friends Of The Dunsmuir Library that includes a portal for online donations. As of this writing, the new feature has brought in nearly $1000.
If you visit our new website at www.dunsmuirlibrary.org, you’ll be impressed with the way Michaelsen tells the story of our library through her selection of photos and explanatory text. You can also view before and after photos of the devastation and repair of the library after a major leak in the roof.
“Putting the website together was a learning experience for me,” she says. “For example, I learned that we have a book club and a 3-D printer.”
What was her motivation for putting in all the volunteer hours she did to create this new feature? “I really appreciate libraries as community gathering places. For our town, it’s a special place where anyone is welcome.”
Michaelsen has lived in Dunsmuir since 2016 and is married to Blake Michaelsen, the city’s finance director.
If you’d like to try out this new way to donate to the library, just go to https://www.dunsmuirlibrary.org/donate
And thanks for helping us keep the doors open.
--Tim Holt
Dunsmuir Library Storm Damage
By Karen O’Quinn, Library Manager
I arrived at the Library on Thursday, November 21, for a regular workday. As I unlocked the front door, I smelled something like burned toast! When I proceeded past the foyer, the first thing I saw was in the southwest children’s corner where pink insulation and ceiling tiles had collapsed onto the book shelves and the floor, and there was water dripping from the ceiling. I then noticed all the ceiling tiles along the south wall were sagging and dripping.
I proceeded to the northwest area where the Friends Bookstore and fiction titles are shelved along the north wall and found carpets soaked with water and water dripping from the ceiling and light fixtures.
Water damage in the Friends Bookstore
After several failed attempts to get through to someone at the city of Dunsmuir I finally reached Manya in the front office and reported the flood damage.
At that point I called my assistant Wes and asked him to come as soon as possible to help pull more books off the shelves before there was more extensive water damage. He arrived quickly and brought his mother Joannie to help.
Then I contacted Bob Welborn from Northwest Restoration and explained our dilemma. He and his crew arrived within the hour and got right to work.
I phoned Dunsmuir Hardware for some plastic rolls to cover the remaining shelves and picked them up as quickly as I could. Library board member Kevin Tynsky came by to help drape them over the shelves.
The County Librarian, Teresa Johnson, was then notified about our disaster and opened an insurance claim.
City Manager Dustin Reif came by while Bob Welborn was here and had a conversation about the damage. Dustin sent some Public Works people by to start clearing the standing water on the newly replaced roof. I was told that although the drains were cleared the Friday before the storm, the heavy wet snow and rain made a slush that clogged them again so the snowmelt and rain had nowhere to go but through the roof onto the ceiling and floor.
The restoration effort was a lengthy process that involved removing the damaged items, restoring as much as possible, and drying everything up.
Finally, exactly two months after I walked into a scene of devastation, the library was able to reopen.