Our Priorities

A great public library is not possible through public funding alone.

The mission of the Walnut Creek Library Foundation is to raise private funds to supplement public funding for both the Walnut Creek Downtown and Ygnacio Valley libraries in order to achieve our vision that both libraries shall become indispensable information resources with free and convenient facilities and services.

Our programs and initiatives include the following:

• Downtown Library Capital and Endowment Campaign
  
• Ygnacio Valley Library Improvements
• One City, One Book: Walnut Creek Reads
• Live! From The Library
• Children’s Summer Reading Program
• Collections
  

Downtown Library Capital and Endowment Campaign

The Library Foundation is conducting a major capital and endowment campaign to support the library construction and expanded programming needs in the new Walnut Creek Downtown Library. We have already received donations from various members of the community including local school children who conducted penny drives. We are pleased that the Dean & Margaret Lesher Foundation awarded the Library Foundation with a $1 million grant for the new Walnut Creek Library. Read more . . .

The new library will replace the existing library, which was built in 1961 when Walnut Creek had fewer than 10,000 residents. Learn about our vision for the new library.

Gifts both large and small will be needed to make the new library a reality. Learn more about ways to donate to the Downtown Library fund . . .

You can read the latest about the City’s plans for the new Downtown Library on the City’s Library Update web pages.

One City, One Book: Walnut Creek Reads

The One City, One Book program encourages community members to read the same book at the same time – thereby creating a citywide book club – and then to participate in a series of community-wide events that celebrate the book. Since its inception in 2006, the program has featured Jhumpa Lahiri's "The Namesake", Wallace Stegner’s “All the Little Live Things", Bill Bryson’s memoir, “The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid”and Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows' "The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society."

Live! From The Library

The Library Foundation launched Live! From The Library in November 2006, a program that features free public lectures and other cultural and literary events. The program is being held at various locations in Walnut Creek until the new library opens in 2010. Read more about the fall events.

Children’s Summer Reading Program

Now entering its seventh year, the Children’s Summer Reading Program offers reading fun for children of all ages and provides incentives to encourage students to continue their reading throughout the summer. The Walnut Creek Library Foundation co-sponsors the Children’s Summer Reading Program at the Walnut Creek libraries with the Contra Costa County Library and Wells Fargo.

 

Collections

David N. Bortin Classical Music Collection
The David N. Bortin Classical Music Collection, which concentrates on symphonic and choral music, will be the largest CD collection of classical music in Contra Costa County. The collection is available at the Ygnacio Valley Library. Beverly Bortin created the fund for this special collection in memory of her husband, an attorney in his professional life, who had a deep and enduring love for both classical music and libraries.

Jerry Miller Opera Collection
The Jerry Miller Opera Collection, available at the Ygnacio Valley Library, is a basic collection of opera CDs and DVDs. Jerry Miller is a founding member of the Walnut Creek Library Foundation and an ardent opera lover. The collection was established in his honor by Beth and Keith Bornemann, his daughter and son-in-law.

Women of California History Collection
The Women of California History Collection is a collection of books purchased with a $5,000 gift from the Walnut Creek Women's Club when it disbanded in 1999. Among its many volumes, the collection includes the following:

• A Frontier Lady: Recollections of the Gold Rush and Early California by Sarah Royce
• Migrant Daughter: Coming of Age as a Mexican-American Woman by Frances Tywoniak
• The Legacy of Luna: The Story of a Tree, a Woman, and the Struggle to Save the Redwoods by Julia Butterfly Hill

The Walnut Creek Women's Club also donated $100,000 toward the new Walnut Creek Downtown Library. Learn more about ways to give . . .