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The National Medal for Museum and Library
services is the nation’s highest honor for

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libraries and museums that are serving their
communities in exciting ways.

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Columbus Metropolitan Library CFO Dewitt Harrell
and community member Khamall Howard traveled

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to Washington to receive the national medal
and spoke to IMLS about how the library impacts

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the community.

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Dewitt Harrell: As the treasurer and the board
member for CHWIC Central High work force investment

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corp, the Columbus Metropolitan Library, we
forge a partnership to help our community

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with job help centers in which we help many
of our members in the community get back to

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work.

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Starts with providing abilities for them to
develop resumes to get help in terms of identifying

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where the job openings are, and it concludes
quite possibly even with the job fair where

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we just recently outworked with the city of
Columbus.

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There was over a 1000 job seekers at our main
library branch.

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Thirty employers.

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I am proud to say this mid November 1000 new
jobs were identified.

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As a result of not only our expo being an
anchor but four other expos that took place

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throughout the city.

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And over a 1000 of our community members got
jobs.

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Khamall Howard: I got involved actually three
summers ago as a community intern, it wasn’t

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just me working there as an intern, once a
week they had a program where they would help

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me with, they’d do workshops for -- all
the people in the program were high school

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students.

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They would get us ready from doing finances
for college and also they would give us workshops

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on how to do a resume, things of that nature
in trying to get us better prepared for going

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out into the workforce.

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And then in February they hired me as an employee,
so now I am a library service aid at the library

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and I am still there.

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The main things that I do is shelve books
and customer service, so as I am shelving

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books if any customer has any questions on
where to go in the library or resource the

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library how to utilize it, they just ask me
the question and I kind of help them.

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I got in to the library through the CHWIC
program as a community intern and so I try

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and inform other high school students if they
are looking for an opportunity to work somewhere

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to volunteer library is a perfect place to
do it.

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Dewitt Harrell: One of our three goals is
to catch our youngest community members as

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early as possible in terms of early literacy
and we have a ready to read program, which

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is an outreach program that with great partnership
and great support to the tune of $1.2 million.

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We’ve been able to develop ready to read
corps that go out in to the community and

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even at different places where caregivers
and parents would take kids for say medical

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attention or just about anywhere they go in
the community.

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We have a ready to read corp where we go reach
out and meet with those caregivers, those

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parents and provide information in terms of
literacy, provide books to kids who are about

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to enter into kindergarten and even a library
card.

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The goal we know from our research is that
30 to 40% of those kids are not ready for

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kindergarten, so it’s our goal to not be
inside our four walls which we do extremely

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well in terms of books so forth and so on
but out goal is to be outside our four walls,

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go out where customers are and meet these
young people and more importantly educate

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the caregivers and parents about the value
and the benefits of literacy.
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