“Community Champion” Bellingham Bookstore Wins Award from Citizens

By J.D. O’Gara

The little used bookstore in town is getting some big recognition of late.

Love Your Shelf LLC, located in Bellingham, is among the recipients of MA Small Business Community Champions for Strengthening Local Economies awarded by Citizens. This year’s program again awarded $10,000 each to 30 small businesses across Citizens’ footprint, including 10 minority-owned and 10 women-owned businesses. For the first time, five awards were also given specifically to veteran-owned businesses. The recipients were chosen from more than 10,000 entries.

As the only independent bookstore in town, Love Your Shelf, LLC. is working to support the school system by offering the use of the store’s event room at no cost for meetings and student use. The store is also in the process of planning a year-long bookfair with a portion of the proceeds going towards the school PTOs to use as needed. There are plans for community events in the works like CPR training, resume writing, writing clubs, and networking nights on the docket.

“I originally had a conversation with Carolyn Rafferty, Assistant Superintendent of Curriculum Instruction and Assessment, and she connected me with Sue Garten, Library Lead,” says Linda Bedard, owner of Love Your Shelf, which moved to its current location at 9 North Main Street in Bellingham in October of 2023. “I expressed the idea for the book fair, as well as other things. At the time, I did not know Bellingham did not have a licensed librarian for the school system. They have some great people acting in those roles, with Sue Garten being the lead person, so I met with Sue and explained how the virtual book fair would work.”

“(Linda) had reached out to us early on in the school year wanting to do a partnership,” says Rafferty, “just really wanting to help us as a district to get to know the bookstore and what it had to offer. We talked about the virtual book fair, which would be a district wide book sale, and we could have this book sale going all year long, and as people went into the shop, the schools would get a percentage of the sales.”

Rafferty noted it made sense to have Garten, of Dipietro Elementary, who has been mentoring the library assistants at the Stallbrook Elementary and Memorial Middle School, act as the hands-on coordinator with Linda Bedard.

“As proceeds come in, someone needs to be available to connect to the schools to be able to spend that money,” says Rafferty. “We can use that money and purchase things for our library through her store.” 

Bedard adds, “It’s a virtual book fair, meaning there’s no lugging of boxes setting up of tables, and because I’m an ABA member and I have a brick-and-mortar location, I have an affiliate partnership with bookshop.org.” She explains, “When someone goes to bookshop.org, 10% of the sales will go to the schools’ various PTO’s. It’s 365 days a year, and anyone in the U.S. can shop, even someone in Iowa.” Bedard adds that she can also highlight items to make a summer reading list.

The virtual book fair is live at https://bookshop.org/shop/BPSBookfair. Rafferty adds that each of the school websites have quick links to the virtual book fair under Information.

Bedard was happy to set up the fundraiser for Bellingham Public Schools. She hopes that school groups and other groups will also see Love Your Shelf as a resource in the community and make use of its meeting room.

“I want to be a service to the community,” says Bedard, “I want to give back.”

In addition to launching the virtual fair, Bedard has just begun the “No Book Book Club” which meets at her bookstore the first Friday of every month, 6:30-8:30 p.m. 

For more information about the Small Business Community Champion program and a complete list of the 2024 winners, please visit https://www.citizensbank.com/small-business/small-business-community-champion.aspx .