The Friends of Tiverton Libraries awarded several individuals at their annual meeting on Sept. 22 at Essex Library.

Those individuals included:

• Library staff member and local artist Jason Eckhardt, for his donation of graphicsto the 'Common Cents' penny drive. He provided a color rendering of a road of pennies passing historic landmarks covering four miles of Highland Road to a new resource-efficient library at Bliss Four Corners.
• Essex Teen Council member Brittany Ann Rothstein, who participated in Barnes and Noble book fairs and the Friends Annual Fair. She is currently a student at Emmanuel College in Boston.
• Coastal Roasters coffee shop, for donating coffee to every major Friends event since they opened.
• Paula Tartaglino, who joined Friends several years ago, who managed the cash register receipts program in cooperation with Lee's Market in Westport, Clement's Market in Portsmouth and Grand Central Market in Tiverton. The fundraiser has netted over $6,000 in income to support library programming since 2004.

Also during the annual meeting, highlights included:

• Library support of $10,000, including summer reading programs and a Gates grant match for computer hardware upgrades.
• Fiscal management of the second Rhode Island Foundation grant for schematic design of $31,500.
• Tracking and fundraising portions of over $10,000 in library flood relief grants, events and donations, which are still coming in.
• A transfer of $6,196.96 in donations held by the Friends for the new building project to the Tiverton Library Foundation.
• The unveiling of a new Friends of Tiverton Libraries logo.

At the annual meeting, Kathy Ryan was elected as president; Cary Bailey as vice president; Kathy Gallagher as secretary; Paula Tartaglino as treasurer and Karen Cooper as historian/archivist.

The Friends of Tiverton Library meet on the third Wednesday of every month at 6:30 p.m at the Essex Library at 238 Highland Road. New friends are welcome. The Friends are a 501 (c) 3 non-profit organization.