Karin Slaughter and Friends Come Together To Help Support Georgia Library and Others

Best-selling author and passionate library advocate Karin Slaughter is helping to spread the word about the need for community support for public libraries.

Slaughter, a resident of Atlanta, has organized SaveTheLibraries, which will have a pilot fundraising event entitled "A Mysterious Evening" on March 12 to benefit the DeKalb County Public Library system in Decatur, GA. The library, which even in good budget times spent only $22 per capita, has had an 85 percent decrease in its book budget since 2008-from $2 million to $300,000, in addition to huge cuts to staff and hours, despite increased usage.

Slaughter hopes that the event and others like it will alert Americans to the devastation their libraries face, bring in much needed money, and be easily replicable at other libraries, with their own local authors, even in smaller locales. To that end, the group is documenting the process of putting together the fundraiser with the aim of minimizing both staff time and cost. In DeKalb County, the event has pulled in corporate and local businesses to cover expenses, so that all proceeds go directly to the DeKalb Library Foundation.

"A Mysterious Evening" launches at the Decatur Library branch with Kathryn Stockett, author of the The Help, and mystery writer Mary Kay Andrews joining Slaughter for a reception and book signing. The event will also feature a silent and online auction, the latter running from March 1-10., that will include autographed prepublication advance reader editions of books by Harlan Coben and Neil Gaiman. A number of signed first editions are also being auctioned, as well as the opportunity to name a character in a book by authors Alafair Burke, Lee Child, and Tess Gerritsen, among a slew of others.

A second event, tentatively scheduled for June in the Boston area, has lined up best-selling authors Dennis Lehane, Douglas Preston, Lisa Gardner, Joseph Finder, Linda Fairstein, and Slaughter.

Slaughter explained her motivation in a September 10 opinion piece in the Atlanta Journal Constitution:

"We need to shift our national view of libraries not as luxuries, but as necessities. When tragedy strikes in other nations, Americans are generous, but our libraries are being hit with a tsunami and there has been no call to action. Staffs are being fired. Hours are being cut. Doors are being closed. Buildings are being razed. Kids are being left behind. Futures are being destroyed.

"Libraries are the backbone of our educational infrastructure, and they are being slowly broken by bankrupt municipalities and apathetic politicians. As voters and taxpayers, we have to demand that our local governments properly prioritize libraries. As charitable citizens, we must invest in our library down the street so that the generations serviced by that library grow up to be adults who contribute to not just their local communities, but to the world."

[Slaughter will also be on hand at LJ's Day of Dialog this year, May 23, coinciding with BookExpo America. Registration will begin later this month, so check back at www.libraryjournal.com.]