ALLAN HANCOCK COLLEGE

In honor of her tremendous generosity, Allan Hancock College dedicated a Lola Ardelia Dority Reading Area (in the library) on Friday, January 29, 2016. Through financial donations and her passion for books and reading, Ms. Dority has changed the lives of many AHC students (and their children) and is helping to grow a new generation of readers in northern Santa Barbara county.  Her interest in encouraging reading led her to contribute tens of thousands of dollars to build two book collections -- children's literature and popular reading. In addition she established an endowment fund exceeding $100,000 to supplement her ongoing annual donations. And that’s not all!  She has also worked countless hours in the library to organize the college’s Hancock Family Estate Archive historical archives.

The two book collections, tiny and aging 10 years ago, are now “big and beautiful” and attract considerable attention and circulation! Students have commented on beginning to love reading after finding books in these collections and others tell us that they read to their children because of the children’s collection.

A familiar face in central coast libraries, Ms. Dority retired from professional librarianship after a number of years at the Vandenberg Base Library. Prior to that, she had the opportunity to work at libraries in Texas, Alaska, and Germany.