Photograph by Skye Dunlap
Bob Balmanno strolls the streets of Sunnyvale delivering books to homebound residents.
Library volunteers sending out an SOS
By Sam Scott
Twice a month, Bob Balmanno, a clerk at Sunnyvale's library, drops his normal duties and jumps into the role of a would-be Santa Claus. Taking to the streets, he delivers bags of library books to homebound Sunnyvale residents.
"It's my exercise," Balmanno jokes as he walks to a city car loaded with plain canvas bags full of books. Good exercise indeed. Some of the bags, stuffed with books and audio books, felt as if they have bowling balls inside.
To the mostly elderly and infirm people he helps, the deliveries are a gift. For some, Balmanno is one of the few contacts they have with other people. Some even become his friends.
"I don't know what I'd do without them," says Kathleen MacArthur, 81, a self-described "readaholic," and one of Balmanno's longest served clients. "It's wonderful that I get books like this."
Balmanno is the public (and flexing) arm of the library's Sunnyvale Outreach Service, a program that uses volunteer librarians, such as Balmanno, to take the library to those who can't come to it. Each month, the library delivers books and tapes to 20 homes and institutions around the city.
Gloria Oleos, an administrator at Highland Heath Care, a home for elderly and recovering patients, says Balmanno's trips keep people's spirits up.
"They find a lot of enjoyment knowing that they can still get their books," Oleos says. "It's a very important service to us."
Mary Chartrain, the librarian who runs SOS, says the big challenge is finding new material for the readers each month. Readers request either titles, genres or a type of book. One woman, Chartrain says, wants 50 books a month, but only in the trade paperback variety she finds easy to lift. The library only has so many of those books.
"The challenge is to get something new every time," Chartrain says. "It requires us to be more creative when they've read a lot of books."
In the past, things have been more difficult. Balmanno says one woman, now deceased, could read only Russian and German texts. None of the current readers has such unusual requests, he says. The library's most pressing need is for large-print books, of which they have a limited supply.
For her part, MacArthur says she always gets a good selection of her favorites: mysteries and English histories.
"They know the type I really like," she says. "The people are so nice to take the time."
Sunnyvale, California Since 1994
