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 Cumberland County Public Library director jod risher and Community member
Willie Wright traveled to Washington from fville North Carolina to receive
the national medal and spoke to imls about how the library impacts the
community well Cumberland county is about 324,000
strong uh it is a diverse Community as you would expect there's a strong
military contingent within the community and because of the presence of the
military that that has added to um the diversity of the community uh Ford Brag
North Carolina is currently the largest
military installation in the world in terms of
personnel there are about 50 8 to 65,000 soldiers affiliated with that
installation and many of the families they live in the community and so as a
result of living in the community they Lo use the cand County Library System
military personnel moved frequently and they need information about the places
that uh they're going to be going to and once they arrive they can use the
libraries to assist them I think the thing though that helps many of our
military person Personnel is the fact that our system assists individuals with
Career Development and so we have opportunities for them to come in help
them with resumés uh provide computers if they need computers and then we
actually have job fairs where uh agencies will come in and set up in the
library and individuals can come in and be interviewed but as the the Ws um are
are winding down and more soldiers are coming back there are other needs that
are emerging and we are now Gathering resources and and studying and
determining how best public libraries can assist those soldiers who come back
um as Wounded Warriors in in whatever way in emotional ways or physical ways
help assist them and their families in the last few years with the economic
downturn uh um our public libraries all public libraries discovered a real need
to participate in Workforce Development in the community and we found that there
there are a lot of people who have lost their jobs or are trying to retrain
they're they're seeing the need to develop better skills usually in the
area of Technology uh we offer small classes
that are are very low key for people who are uh trying to gain these skills and
offer one-on-one assistance there are about uh 30% of the population
is under 18 and that translates to the public libraries and a need for um a
strong children's programming uh component you may have heard of the stem
initiative and that's uh science technology engineering and math there's
a great need to encourage um young people to pursue careers in those areas
and you need to start young um and last spring um there there was a North
Carolina uh Science Festival and our library participated uh and had over
thousand over a thousand children uh participate in a series of programs that
included Robotics and ooey gooey science experiments those those kinds of things
that are fun and also excite children and and and make them want to uh to look
a little further into that area so so uh we're an integral part of the community
we're an anchor institution and uh we're there to to
help people grow in whatever way that they decide they want to grow