NYC Libraries Receive a Pot of Gold
Wallace Foundation grants $6 million to improve children's programming
By Debra Lau Whelan -- School Library Journal, 1/1/2004
New York Public Library (NYPL), Brooklyn Public Library (BPL), and Queens Borough Public Library (QBPL) will each spend their $2 million "Learning in Libraries" grants over the next three years to expand and create children's programs. But a substantial part of these resources will also go toward ensuring that the systems work together on collaborative projects.
"It's a big-picture grant that involves a long-term plan to train staff and evaluate and revitalize our after-school efforts," says Margaret Tice, NYPL's coordinator of children's services. "[It will allow us] to work together to improve how we offer after-school services to children—from coordination to marketing and outreach to making sure the money is spent in the most efficient way possible with no administrative duplication."
Collaborative projects include cooperation with the city's department of education to develop a better homework-help Web site for kids, and to launch a "Planning for Results" program, designed to increase the exchange of ideas between the libraries' staff and its communities, including public schools. The Urban Libraries Council, which received an $897,000 Wallace grant, will hire a senior program officer to oversee these joint efforts.
The $6 million gift, made in response to a $36 million emergency campaign announced by Mayor Michael Bloomberg in May (see News, June 2003, p. 23), couldn't have come at a better time. NYPL—with 85 libraries serving 50,000 kids a day—only had $30,000 in its coffers for pre-K–6 after-school programming in FY 2003–2004. The grant will allow the library system to continue a variety of poetry, writing, and arts-and-crafts projects, as well as launch more literacy enrichment programs and expand its online author chats, Tice says.
BPL hopes its enhanced after-school and summer programs will reach about one-third of the 675,000 kids it serves in 60 branches, says Ginnie Cooper, the library's executive director. The library will broaden its after-school efforts by hiring teens to help younger kids with their homework and recruiting volunteers to read to middle schoolers.
QBPL, which serves the most ethnically diverse county in the nation through its 63 branches, will broaden a popular latchkey program and focus on college preparatory and career development programs that prepare kids for the future, says Maureen O'Connor, the library's director of programs and services.
"We hope our partnership with the three New York City library systems will help libraries around the country serve their communities more effectively," says Christine DeVita, president of the Wallace Foundation.
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