Fixing up Gambino Room

Cranbury Library room gets a fresh look

By: Lacey Korevec
   The Gambino Room in the Cranbury Library now has a much friendlier appearance for library-goers.
   The Friends of the Cranbury Public Library have refurbished the room, adding brand new cabinets for storage and reorganizing the books that are for sale, and the Friends are not stopping there. They’ve got their hands full this year with big plans for new activities and new ways to encourage Cranbury residents to increase library usage.
   Co-presidents Arlene Duran and Jean Golisano said the room was mostly being used for storage and was packed with boxes before the Friends embarked on the project and spent over $4,000 purchasing five new wooden cabinets, which the library will use to store videos and newspapers. The money was generated from Friend’s book sales that took place on Cranbury Day and the group’s membership drive.
   The public room is named after former Township Committee member and library trustee Tom Gambino, an avid library supporter who died in 2002.
   "We just wanted to make sure that this room could continue being used as a community room and that groups could feel comfortable when they came here," Ms. Golisano said. "It was just becoming a storage room because of lack of space, but this enabled us to get our books back on the shelf for book sales and the library would have storage space."
   The objective, they said, was to organize the room and give it a professional appearance so that community members could use it for different purposes. Both the library and the school welcomed the upgrade to the room, Ms. Duran said. From there the project, which only got under way in September, did not take long to complete.
   "It was a very cooperative effort," she said.
   With the room reorganized, the Friends has been able to restore the bulk of it’s book selling section, which is located on shelves in the Gambino room. The For Sale section has been on hiatus for the past six months because the library needed the shelves to hold newspapers and videos, Ms. Golisano and Ms. Duran said.
   The book section is made up of donated books from residents. Anyone who has books to donate should contact the library.
   The Friends also has plans for a number of events this year, including holiday and Valentine’s Day children’s greeting card workshops, the historic house tour and gourmet luncheon, the Cranbury Day and spring book sales and the summer reading club. On July 10, the group is planning a trip to the Franklin Institute to visit the King Tut Exhibit.
   The group has also started a new Dedicate a Book program for this year, which will allow residents to dedicate library books to friends, loved ones or teachers.