Volunteers drawn from friends groups can help carry off functions that the library's short staffing might make impossible. Friends can help the academic library form partnerships with other community entities, including the public library, by co-sponsoring programs and events with them. Friends can act as advocates to increase community awareness of library issues and challenges. One of the great appeals of the academic friends group is the opportunity it affords the library to conduct public programs that have not traditionally been part of the library's role. Many academic libraries utilize friends groups to enter more fully into the intellectual life of the campus and surrounding community.
Friends groups help open the door of the university's academic enterprise to the broader community.
Many Still Friendless Increasingly academic libraries are recognizing these and other benefits of friends organizations. In fact, a significant percentage of academic libraries do not have friends groups. Perhaps the immediate returns of friends groups are not high enough to warrant serious consideration by some academic libraries. But the PR generated by public programs may yield returns that are unforeseeable. In other words, the innovative programs or services that a friends group makes possible in the academic library may not bring in buckets of money, but they will focus the eyes of potential donors on the library.