the national medal for Museum and Library Services is the nation's highest
honor for libraries and museums that are serving their communities in exceptional
ways Contra Costa Community Library director Barbara L Flynn and Community
member glattus leaks traveled to Washington from Pleasant Hill California
to receive the national medal and spoke to imls about how the library impacts
the community well Contra custa County Library is contra custa County
California which is across from San Francisco it means the other side so
we're the other side from San Francisco we have 26 libraries in 18 cities in a
th000 square miles we serve everyone from babies in
the labp uh to the eldest senior citizen uh with a variety of programs which uh
does include books but it's not limited to books uh it's books it's DVDs CD
books on tape electronic books we like to say and I truly believe that the
library is at the heart of the community project second chance is our
literacy program for adults uh it gives uh people a second chance at life at
learning how to read and spell and enjoy all the wonderful things that books have
to offer first visits to the library was taking by grandchildren and checking out
books and bringing them back where they could read
brought him to the library because I grew up not knowing how to read and
spell and wanted to make sure that they took every opportunity every everything
that I could give them that they would learn and know how to read and spell
growing up I lost 104 PBS from Weight Watchers desire was to work for Weight
Watchers and so to work for Weight Watchers one of the requirements was to
read I had to learn the program I had to read about the program
and they uh told me they didn't know if I would be able to work for Weight
Watchers because they had never ran into anyone who couldn't read my oldest son
who was a doctor uh told me to check out a program that was that um he just said
he just gave me where the program was it was at the library and I told him no I
had been through programs all my life all from a child I was in um special ed
every kind of program there was adult educational programs and it would always
lead back to the same I would go no further than what I was so um really it
was to kind of close his mouth because he wasn't giving up I went to this
program and I don't know what is Karen Karen um
what is her what is her she's well she's a tutor trainer the tutor who was
excellent and I sat down and she had me to read but the main thing that I
learned from the beginning was as everybody all my life had always told me
sound it out sound it out um and so when the um Karen the um the
instructor said sound this out and that was the first time I asked her what is a
sound I didn't know what a sound was I didn't know that letters had
sounds and so when that came about I started getting training to learn the
sounds sounds had was would spell words I don't think people know that
these programs are at the library I had heard um years years ago that the
library had a program that would train um that would teach you how to read the
first thought went into my mind these were retired people who had nothing else
to do and decided they wanted to come in and help maybe help teach somebody how
to read without the skills so my thought was no but now these tutors that they
have now they're skilled um it's a volunteer program we uh train volunteers
to be tutors and uh do everything we can to meet our individual students needs to
teach them to uh read and spell project second chance opened the door that open
open a whir of reading that open another
life I don't think you realize most people don't realize if you
can't read you don't function