From the library to Nigeria and back again

Published 11:40 am Wednesday, March 5, 2014

Editor’s note: The Orcas Island Library is hoping to embark on an expansion of its facility. In the next year, there will be public meetings, design work and fundraising. The Sounder is running a series on the library’s staff.

Lynn Carter worked for 19 years as an administrator. Little did she know that those skills would transfer to 13 years of service for the Orcas Island Public Library and would also take her far across the sea and deep into the jungle.

She and her husband James Lobdell moved to the island in 1998 from Portland, Ore. In Portland, Carter worked as third party administrator for unions mainly dealing with pension and health plans and cemetery and funeral pre-planning.

On Orcas, Carter was a perfect volunteer because she was able to work with computers and because giving her time to the library is literally woven into her family tree. Her mother-in-law and grandmother-in-law were both heavily involved in the Orcas Island Public Library. Yet, it was not what Carter had in mind for her retirement. She thought she would just work on one project because she knew how to navigate computers and then Carter said it all “escalated.” She was taught how to manage the finances, catalog books and man the front desk.

“One thing led to another,” she said.

Carter has been volunteering on the island since 2001. She also serves as the Friends of the Library treasurer.  The Friends is a nonprofit that raises funds for the library. Between these two capacities, Carter spends about 20 to 30 hours a week at the library.

In her office, which she calls a little hole in the wall, there are stacks of books labeled with words like pottery, expensive and eBay. This room in the back of the library is where all the donated books for fundraising are funneled to. The two main fundraising events are the Friends’ winter and summer book sale.

Some of the donated books will bypass the sale and go straight to eBay. Volunteers like Carter research the top end books to find out how much they should sell them for online.

“I’ve never realized how much value there are in books and the connections people have with them,” she said.

Carter said the objective is to get rid of the books and get the cash. It may sound funny to learn that in a room in the back of the library they are being sold to later benefit the library. Thanks to those donations the Friends have been able to give $100,000 for the library’s planned renovations.

Unpopular literature that can’t be sold, like self help or mass produced paperbacks, are sent to California where they are sold, recycled or sent to other countries. The library receives a percentage of the funds. When not weeding through donated literature, Carter said she likes to travel, which is a bit of an understatement considering the exotic stamps on her passport.

Every year for ten years Lobdell and Carter would spend three months in Nigeria to volunteer at a wildlife project that aimed to help recover an endangered species of monkey called the pandrillus.

And how did Carter help? By working on the accounting of the nonprofit called The Drill Rehabilitation and Breeding Center.

She calls it grueling work in the bush. Of course there were highlights like holding baby chimpanzees and the adventure of living in the jungle.

But that may be in the past, Carter and her husband are spending their time year-round in the San Juans. Now Carter navigates through the countless books that are brought to her and she urges people to join her to volunteer or join the Friends board.

“We can always use more help,” she said.