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("Treasures " continued from page 2) only a comparatively small discretionary budget for the little touches to maintain the soul of our Library. The methods of fundraising over these years have been most creative - whist drives; tea parties; selling raffle tickets for autographed books by local authors; a book memorial programme; musical recitals; "meet the author" evenings; a music lecture series conducted by the UBC Extension Department; sponsoring the Library's book donor programme; to name just some of them. In the eighties, the Friends again employed the tactic used so successfully in 1955. The existing, exceedingly well used bookmobile needed a complete overhaul. The Friends pledged to raise $20,000 for this purpose, which inspired the Library to think in terms of a new vehicle and, faced with this pledge, Council agreed to contribute double the amount. Perhaps they thought we would not be able to raise quite so much! Again, the Friends took an innovative approach and investigated how they could participate in and benefit from the Province's gambling revenue programme. We learned that we needed to become a registered charity and so, on January 18, 1989, our association was incorporated as a Society under the Province's Society Act and thus able to benefit from government programmes favouring charities. Achieving this required time, patience and a great deal of work as a formal, legal constitution, with bylaws had to be compiled. The application to the Gaming Commission was successful and the Friends participated in a three-day casino in January 1992. More than the pledged amount was raised, and the Friends donated a further $2,500 to cover the cost of customizing the new van for library use. We subsequently participated in casinos in 1993, 94, 95 and 97, this later providing the funding for the Language Learning Laboratory to which we contributed just over $33,000. There really should be a sign above the casino hall entrance saying "suspend believe all yea who enter", and those of us who have been volunteers will never forget counting half a million dollars in bills, finding counterfeit notes or watching the casino patrons - let alone coming across the bridge having left Chinatown after 4 a.m. on a winter morning. Alas, no more - charity volunteer participation is a thing of the past and all we get to do now is fill in a boring old form. However, this programme of the Friends has funded projects as diverse as computer equipment for our Youth Services Department, furnishings for our meeting rooms, main hall and children's Story House and some excellent encyclopaedia, dictionaries and other materials for the reference department. The annual book sales run by the Friends have offered similar drama. These sales have been held every year since 1982 - sometimes twice a year, once for "hardbacks" and once for "paperbacks". The size of each sale has depended to an important extent on the size of the area allotted and, perhaps even more, on the facilities available for sorting books. In the earlier years this had to be done in a tiny, dingy, ill-lit room, outside the main building and down in the ravine on its eastern side. This little hole was known to the Friends as "The Dungeon". From there the sorted books had to be lugged up steps for display and sale. Over the years, the sorting has been carried out in the small basement of the Technical Services Department and on one occasion, in the basement and garage of one of our generous members! One year the sale was outdoors in the Library's front courtyard which has now been demolished - and yes, it rained. In 1992, the sale was held for the first time in the cavernous ice arena. That year the heavy boxes of books had to be hauled up the stairs from the Technical Services Department to a waiting van which ferried them to the arena. There, the volunteers did a tremendous amount of work in setting up tables and arranging the books in their proper category sections. Immediately after the sale we had to reverse the procedures, including dismantling and stacking the tables. "Operation Ice Arena" lasted for three years.