Queens Library Turns Learning Center into Welcome Center for Social Services
Only public library to be lead agency in NYS grant program
Norman Oder -- Library Journal, 01/05/2010
- $950,000 grant
- Goes beyond information to specific help
- State grant addresses concentrated poverty, lack of English
When the Queens Library at Long Island City opened in June 2007, the 18,000 square foot building boasted both a full-service public library and an Adult Learning Center, aimed to help adult new readers and new English speakers with literacy, career development, improved English proficiency, health care, family issues, and computer help.
Now this pilot “Literacy Zone,” launched in collaboration with the New York State Department of Education (NYSED), has been ramped up further, thanks to a three-year, $950,000 NYSED grant that turns it into a Welcome Center.
Queens Library is the only public library to be a lead agency on the Literacy Zone project, whose goal is to close the achievement gap in urban and rural communities with concentrated poverty and with large numbers of families and individuals who have limited literacy or English-language proficiency.
Three locations, new help
At the Welcome Center and the Learning Center annexes at Ravenswood and Queensbridge, the library will offer referrals on issues like health care, housing, social services, tax services, and eligibility for benefits.
While the existing Adult Literacy Center and Family Literacy Programs provide comprehensive literacy services and limited referrals to outside agencies, now a case manager and counselors can go farther.
For example, typically the library would refer a client with a landlord problem to a list of government agencies and web sites, but under the new program staffers can offer specific help.
The grant, according to library spokeswoman Joanne King, supports a full-time case manager, Sandra Michele Echols (formerly a youth counselor at the library’s Far Rockaway teen space); half the salary of a community liaison and partnership coordinator (full-time salary shared with another grant); several hourly-rate ESOL/Adult Basic Ed/Pre-GED teachers, a teacher's assistant, and an administrative aide.
