COUNTYWIDE : Many Events Mark U.S. Library Week

Books sales, storytelling presentations and speeches by best-selling authors are scheduled at libraries from La Habra to Irvine starting today as Orange County celebrates National Library Week.

“This is basically a week to recognize the importance of libraries in people’s lives and the services they provide,” said Cheryl Pruett, community relations coordinator for the Orange County Public Library.

About a dozen of the county’s 28 branch libraries have scheduled activities, as have several city, college and university libraries.

At UC Irvine, Ralph Bledsoe, director of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, will give a speech today.

The Reagan library has the nation’s largest collection of White House documents ever assembled and is a popular stop for academics and journalists researching the Iran-Contra affair and other events in the Reagan Administration.

Bledsoe “will be talking about research opportunities there and about the collection,” said Christina Woo, who heads the Irvine campus branch of the University of California Librarians Assn.

Bledsoe also is expected to discuss how the public can gain access to the archives and how he and his staff organize the maze of documents, Woo said.

He will speak at 10 a.m. in the UCI Student Center’s Emerald Bay Room D.

Other Library Week events include:

* A storytelling performance by Debra Weller at the Mesa Verde branch library in Costa Mesa at 4 p.m. Thursday.

* A presentation of films based on children’s books at 3:30 p.m. Wednesday at the Cypress branch library.

* A speech by Nancy Taylor Rosenberg, the author of “Mitigating Circumstances,” at the Dana Niguel branch library at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday.

* A cooking demonstration by Chinese “master chef” Mike Wong at the Fountain Valley branch library at 7 p.m. Thursday. Tickets are $7 and may be purchased at the library bookstore.

* A book sale all week at the La Habra branch library.

* A speech to children by author Alison Jackson at the Laguna Beach branch library at 3:30 p.m. Wednesday.

* A workshop on how to illustrate children’s books at the Stanton branch library at 3 p.m. Wednesday.

Pruett said she hopes patrons leave the events “with a new or renewed appreciation for the diversity offered by the library. We’re not just books anymore.”