VOORHEESVILLE — Encore! Books, at the Voorheesville Public Library, is the brainchild Sherry Burgoon, but it’s her sister, Patty Miller, who has made it a success.

“Patty Miller deserves a lot of the credit because she’s the one who literally has spent hundreds of hours on this project, over the past couple of years,” said Burgoon, president of the Friends of the Voorheesville Public Library. “It was my light bulb, but she truly is the one who ran with this, and is the reason why we have Encore! Books now.”

On Friday, Sept. 14, the reopening of Encore! Books (with a second shed) coincides with the 29th annual used-book sale put on by the Friends of the Voorheesville Public Library.

On Sept. 14, from 3 to 7:30 p.m., only members of the Friends group will be able to peruse the 10,000 books available for purchase at the library’s annual fall book sale.

The sale is open to the public on Saturday, Sept. 15, from 9 a.m. to 7:30 p.m., and on Sunday, Sept. 16, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.

The Friends of the Voorheesville Public Library, Burgoon said, has five levels of membership: an individual membership has an annual cost of $10; a family membership costs $20; a sponsor membership is $35; a patron is $5o; and a benefactor has an annual membership fee of $100.

Several years ago, Burgoon was vacationing in Orchard Beach, Maine.

“Right across the street, directly from our rental, was a used-book shed,” Burgoon said. “It was really quite cute and I thought a great way for their Friends of the Library to support their library.”

Burgoon — who retired in 2010 from teaching English the Voorheesville public schools — thought that the Voorheesville Friends could develop a similar concept, and, when she became president, they did.

About three years ago, Burgoon said, a contest was held to name the book shed; they received 16 or 17 suggestions. “We just ended up narrowing it down and choosing Encore! Books,” she said, with the idea that, like the repeated or additional performance at the end of a concert, the used books will get another chance to perform — an encore.

Encore! Books has become so successful that the Friends of the Library have been donating to other programs, Burgoon said, including Community Caregivers, in Albany, for example. Last year, after Hurricane Harvey battered Houston, the Friends packed a number children’s books into a relief truck that was heading to Texas.

The shed has been a financial success as well.  

Burgoon said that last year, the shed was open to the public about 10 times, and, with the suggested donation of a dollar for a hardcover book and 50 cents for a paperback, they made $4,000.

“We grew so fast and became so popular,” Burgoon said, “we had to have a second shed.”

In December 2016, she said, the Friends of the Library approached the library board about a second shed, which “absolutely approved” it.

In January 2017, an appeal letter was sent to the 325 Friends of the Voorheesville Public Library.

Within three weeks, $7,000 in contributions had come in. “It was mind-boggling,” Burgoon said, “we couldn’t believe how excited people really were about the concept, and how very willing to open their pocketbooks and send money they were.”

“It blew our minds away, to be honest,” she added.

Within another two months, the Friends had raised a total of $13,000.  

Members of the Friends have also been generous with their time, she said, her sister has a list of 50 to 60 volunteers that she can call to work at the Encore! Books shed. “She’s really the one who totally has developed the shed into what it's become,” Burgoon said of her sister, Patty, a retired Berne-Knox-Westerlo kindergarten teacher.

The original plan, Burgoon said, was to have the second shed ready for the summer of 2017, but that did not happen.

The project encountered a number of roadblocks: code issues; a location change; a foundation was needed; and, in April, the original shed had to be moved so that the library’s parking lot could be paved. About 150 boxes of books were stored in the garage of a Friend of the Library, Burgoon said.

“It became a project that we thought was going to be open within five months [of approval], and it’s taken until September of 2018 [to open] — from the first concept of adding a shed in January of 2017,” she said.

Burgoon said the she and her sister had guesstimated that each shed holds about 5,000 books.