5th Annual LiBerry Music Festival in Ester!

The John Trigg Ester Library is holding its fifth annual music festival and pie contest on Saturday, August 21, in the village of Ester, near Fairbanks. Music starts at 2 pm and performances continue on into the wee hours of the morning. The Ester library has been raising funds for construction of a new library for the past six years; groundbreaking begins this year.

For more information, contact Monique Musick or Bob Huebert, organizers and library board members.

Another fundraiser

Trey Simmons plans to host a Red Dress Party for the John Trigg Ester Library sometime in February. This is an event where all attendees must wear a red dress or dress-like garment (toga, kilt, smoking jacket, bathrobe). "Red" can be anything from pink to burgundy. There's music and food, and you pay money to get in. Apparently these fundraisers are quite successful in Logan, Utah (where the original Red Dress Party was held) and Portland, Oregon, where each year the organizers choose a different charity to donate money to, and the parties have grown to the size where they raise tens of thousands of dollars.

It sounds like a lot of fun!

Fundraisers and fundraising ideas

Library fundraisers can bring in a wide variety of people from the community and can be a lot of fun, too. The community of Ester uses music, food, sports, and various contests to engage people. The John Trigg Ester Library has three fundraisers a year: the Book Bash & Lallapalooza (an auction with entertainment and a lasagne feed), the Li-Berry Music Festival and Pie Throwdown (a music festival and pie-baking contest), and Readers on the Run (a 5-kilometer footrace with costume contest and stops to create magnetic poetry for the poetry contest).

The Li-Berry Music Festival this year will be September 13, from 3-9:30 pm (or later) at the Golden Eagle Saloon and Hartung Hall, in the village of Ester. Pies are due at the Eagle between 12 and 3 and must include wild Alaska berries, but can be savory or sweet. (See our contest rules for more information or e-mail the JTEL librarians.)

For our 2010 spring fundraiser, the Lallapalooza, we are going to have for the first time a Library Decathlon: ten sporting events playing on stereotypes and actual duties of librarians. So far the list includes tests of skill such as a Ruler Thwack, a Shushing event, a Book Stack Carry and Alphabetize Relay Race, a Book Cart Costume & Choreography Contest (on the order of the drill team event in Chicago), and a Book Thief Tackle event. Teams from around the state will be invited, and librarians in particular are encouraged to participate, although the general public can try their library skills also.

So tell us—what sorts of fun things do you do for fundraisers?