Your donations to FFRPL help support the Library’s community impact through:
Legacy programs
Collections
- Books & materials, e-books, DVD’s
Unique Resources for Loan
- Framed artwork, ukuleles and sewing machines at Central Library
- Thousands of toys at the Lincoln Branch’s Toy Library
- Empire Passes for FREE entry at NY State Parks
- A portable document reader that can magnify materials up to 131x
- Pre-loaded GoChip Beam movies with wifi hotspots (with support from the Reynolds Library Board)
Creation of Special Spaces
- imagineYOU Digital Media Learning Lab for teens
- Renovation of Central Library’s newly named Kusler-Cox Auditorium (2018)
- Health Central – volunteer medical professionals screen blood pressure, body mass index and glucose levels for patrons at no charge
Community Collaborations
- NEA Big Read (April 2023)
- Terrace Revitalization Project (2019-2022), in partnership with the City, County, key community stakeholders, Board and Art committee members, donors and patrons: renovation of infrastructure, large-scale public art, community gathering spaces and site-specific historical information
- Safe to be Smart youth program at Central Library and five city branches (since 2000)
- Partnership with Writers & Books in support of Rochester Reads
- National Book Award-winning novelist Jason Mott (2022)
- Botanist Robin Wall Kimmerer (2021)
- (no 2020 program due to COVID)
- Novelist Omar El Akkad, American War (2019)
- Novelist and memoirist Reyna Grande, The Distance Between Us (2018)
- Novelist Rene Denfeld, The Enchanted (2017)
- Essayist and memoirist Sonja Livingston, Queen of the Fall (2016)
- Novelist Karen Thompson Walker, The Age of Miracles (2015)
- Sponsorship of Greater Rochester Teen Read authors Leslie C. Youngblood (2022), Ruta Sepetys (2021 – virtual program), G. Neri (2019), Laurie Halse Anderson (2018) and others (FFRPL has served as the Fiscal Sponsor since 2010).
- Anthony Mascioli Rainbow Dialogues
Special Events
- RPL online Author series (launched July 2022)
- Annual Publishers’ Circle Library Celebration Dinner
- Virtual Library Celebration (Nov. 2020)
- Palaces for the People author Eric Klinenberg (Nov. 2019)
- Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist David Cay Johnston (Nov. 2018)
- Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Amy Goldstein (Nov. 2017)
- Award-winning adventurer Jennifer Pharr Davis (April 2018)
- Libraries After Dark: May the 4th Be With You (May 2018)
- Libraries After Dark: Fringe Carnival @ Central Library (Sept. 2018)
- Young Adult fiction superstar Rick Riordan (Oct. 2017)
Free Computer Access
- Support for health and business database subscriptions at Central Library
- Computer classes at Central Library in English and Spanish
Exhibits
