Dear Community,

Since our last update, Team MIBrary has made tremendous progress. We have an official location: the Downtown Lafayette Public Library! Our launch date is forthcoming, but we anticipate late spring or early summer 2018.

To date, Team MIBrary has collected 2 fiddles, 2 guitar amps, 1 classical guitar, 2 acoustic guitars, 5 electric guitars, 1 lap steel guitar, 3 keyboards, and 1 snare drum all through donations. We’ve learned a better approach to receiving donations: ask people directly! Our instrument drive posted in our last update did not go so well, but when we asked our personal friends and family, people really stepped up and donated many instruments!

We have not used any of the funds from the 24 Hour Citizen Project yet, but should we not be able to obtain electronic drum kits or accordions through donations, we will purchase these. We are also going to communicate with other libraries who lend out musical instruments to have a better idea of if we should set aside funds for maintenance and repair of the instruments.

We are extremely excited to see the project come to fruition. We are hopeful that our next update will include our launch date–or perhaps details from it already being launched!

Ryan Cazares, O.D. (Team Leader)