– A Successful Friends Season

April 2026

Dear Members, Friends, and Friends of Friends

The Friends have had a fabulous season!

We’ve grown our membership — in both numbers and revenue. We hosted four successful book sales, generating funds while serving a broad cross-section of our community. Our 10 Monday evening speaker events were consistently well attended. For the fourth consecutive year, our annual fundraising Gala — featuring author and food critic Ruth Reichl — sold out, as did our murder mystery tea for the second year in a row. We are already working on an exciting lineup of events for next season.

Your library is thriving. In 2025 the library circulated items almost 95,000 times to over 15,000 borrowers, double the usage of any other branch in Monroe County. More than 7,500 adults and almost 3,000 kids participated in library activities.

The Friends benefit from a strong and productive partnership with library leadership, thanks in no small part to the professionalism and collaboration of Michael Nelson, Assistant Director for County Services for the Monroe County Library System, and Kim Rinaldi, Senior Branch Manager, along with her exceptional team.

Former Friends president Kathleen Bratton has described the library as “the crossroads of Key West — the place where you meet people from every walk of life on our island.” Board member Betty Darst calls it “the public square of our community.”

We hope you agree that public libraries continue to play a vital role in our communities and are deserving of your support. Thank you for all you do.

Barbara Ross