Students Raise $11,000 to Buy Books for Fledgling Library

Teenagers in Santa Clarita who appealed to celebrities around the world for help in filling their school library have raised $11,000 by auctioning autographed photos and other mementos, officials said Thursday.

The hottest item turned out to be a signed watercolor painted by California Sen. Dianne Feinstein, which went for $190 after bidders fought over it to the end Saturday night, auction coordinator Jacquie Custer said.

Auction profits will be spent on books for the Valencia High School library, which opened 1 1/2 years ago. The library has room for about 50,000 books. But the school ran out of money to stock it after about 2,500 were purchased.

That has caused hardships for students, each of whom picked a celebrity to write to. In their letters, the teenagers explained the situation and appealed for an item to be auctioned. Hundreds of actors, authors and statesmen responded.

After a list of the donated items was posted on the Internet, bids were e-mailed to the school from throughout the United States and from Belgium and Canada. School librarian Sharon Ballard said the first books to be purchased with the auction proceeds will probably be 12th-grade-level volumes on economics, government and physics.