Minneapolis Public Library
The Greater Minneapolis Crisis Nursery is a great organization out of Golden Valley working to reduce child abuse and neglect through providing services for parents in crisis. Their goal is to strengthen families and communities. After volunteering at the Nursery for a few months, a friend of mine became very interested in the seemingly low literacy rate of the children she was working with. She wondered if her shock was a result of growing up with very educated parents in a wealthy neighborhood or if she was just unaware of how illiterate our society was. In response, she devoted a semester to learning about childhood literacy and presented her research to the student body. She opened our eyes to the low level of literacy in many adults and what that means for their children. One major problem that stuck in my head was the number of children that do not own books. If kids don’t have books to read, how are they going to learn? Especially when their families are not in a state to be able to help them.
This problem sparked the “Read to Succeed: Tonka Students for Childhood Literacy� program. Throughout the first year, my friend collected almost thousands of books to put in the hands of children passing through the Crisis Nursery. The hope was that with these books, the children would be inspired to read and break the illiteracy cycle.
The next best thing to children owning books is going to the library and renting books. The libraries are public facilities that every child should be familiar with, right? They should be available to everyone. But the truth is that in the past few years, keeping libraries open and usable in Minneapolis has been very difficult. Ridiculous budget cuts meant fewer hours. Then fewer employees. And in 2006, it meant fewer branches. Unfortunately, many of the 15 branches of Minneapolis Public Libraries were closed. Others were cut down to a few hours a day or only a few days a week. These limits make it so much harder for kids to get to the libraries, especially the ones that need to be at the library. More than likely, parents will be working during the hours the libraries are open. Or the library would be too far away.
There has to be a way that libraries can stay available for all children. A way for them to get there. A surge fundraiser. A strong volunteer system that will allow more branches to stay open. A compromise on hours.
In 2006, three budget situations were proposed with different combinations of hour changes and branch closings. The one chosen called for the closing of three branches and cutting hours dramatically at three others. The remainder of the branches would have extended hours, but only would be open Tuesday through Saturday. So what happens on Mondays? What happens to the kids that lived by the libraries that are now closed? What happens to the parents that can’t get their kids to the library in the limited hours?
There is no easy solution. And I guess I don’t know enough about the library system to give any advice. But I know that with creativity, budgets can be stretched and compromises can be reached that will provide children with the best possibility at becoming literate.