The North Riverside Public Library, the heart of the Village of North Riverside, IL, had a huge project that needed to be completed as quickly as possible in order to make its DVD collection available to the patrons with the least amount of interruption and inconvenience. The time consuming project consisted of transferring over 1300 DVDs from old CD cases to new, more durable security-lined cases. How could this project be accomplished with the small staff working on the project only during slivers of time between their other projects? The project would take many, many months to finish.

The NRP Library allows our Czechoslovak Society of America (CSA) membership to gather at its location for our monthly meetings at no cost to the lodge. In return for this generous gesture, nine members of the CSA Fraternal Life Lodge RT Crane from ages 17 and up offered to help the library with the project. Volunteers met almost daily to work on the project. The work was very tedious and involved much concentration. Required duties involved typing of labels, removal of DVD inserts, duplication of information, gluing, copying, cutting, etc. The time to complete the process for one DVD took approximately 15 minutes.

Working diligently over a period of three months, our lodge members spent 302 volunteer hours to finish the project. Our goal was to finish the project by July 4th which was done. What a great accomplishment for our volunteer group. We all felt a great deal of satisfaction for being able to help the library and make available the DVD collection to the community for their enjoyment.

Working closely with the other volunteers during this project, I recall all the special moments we spent together sharing stories, laughs, complaints of aches and pains and uncomfortable chairs, memories of songs played on DVDs. This would not have happened if we did not have the opportunity to work on this project and to get to know each other better.