It’s been no secret that the Fluvanna County Schools have fallen upon some hard times lately. The high school library is no exception, having been struggling to make ends meet without any funds for new books. Fortunately, the new librarians this year, got creative with the fundraising ideas.

Librarian Lisa Lucas, who used to be the librarian at Central, was ready for the task before she even came to the high school, “When my transfer request to the high school was approved, I asked Scholastic Bookfairs to schedule a time for a fair at the high school,” Lucas said. With plan in place, she was ready to start fundraising… until they responded with a librarian’s nightmare. “To my horror, Scholastic does not organize bookfairs at the high school level,” Lucas said.

So she consulted fellow librarian and former high school history teacher, Shannon Taylor, who suggested a more “mature” version of an elementary school book fair: a Barnes and Noble Book Fair. This enabled a percentage of sales at the Charlottesville Barnes and Noble on a particular day to go to the FCHS library. So on Dec. 6, Lucas and Taylor manned a table at the store displaying multiple books which people could purchase and donate to the library for their catalog. Also, if a customer mentioned “Fluvanna County High School Library” at checkout or online during a specified period of time, up to 20% of their purchase would be donated to the library.

Not only were the librarians helping at the book fair, the dedicated library aides and Interact club members helped as well. “It was definitely an interesting experience; it was fun meeting all the different people and encouraging them to help support our library,” said FCHS senior and library aide Janai Mealey.

The librarians knew they had to do something else to attract attention to their potentially profitable event. Their creativity came into play again when they decided to invite Mike Sheridan, a coach and teacher at the middle school, as well as a newly elected Board of Supervisors member, to read the classic Christmas tale, The Polar Express. To round out the event, they arranged a musical performance by Central Elementary music teacher Darrell Baughn, and displayed art work from FCHS art teacher Diane Greenwood’s classes in the store.

At the end of the event, the library received a total donation of 22 books and at least $1,200 from a percentage of the sales. So hopefully, it’s just a matter of time before that just-published best-seller students have been waiting for appears on the library shelves. In the meantime, if you want to support the FCHS library with book or financial donations, contact

[email protected].