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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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San José Public Library director Jane Light
and community member Vikram K. Kanth 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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Jane Light: San Jose is very diverse.

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I think one of the things that it makes that
so fun.

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About 40% of the people who live in our county,
our city were born in other country and speak

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a language other than English at home, as
their primary language.

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But one of the great things about the library
is actually one of the few places where everybody

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ends up at the library and mixes and matches
and learns about one another and that is to

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me one of the wonderful parts of a library.

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Vikram K. Kanth: Growing up the library is
probably one of the most important things

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to me.

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Story from my very, very early childhood I
randomly ran in to the library and that was

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probably the first time my parents had gone
in to a library in the United States.

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And so when I ran in to the library, the librarian
kindly picked me up from my parents and so

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that’s when my parents discovered the joys
of the library and that it provides services

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to everyone not just members of that respective
community and citizens of the United States

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and that a library was truly an open place
for the entire community.

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As I grew older the library became more of
a place for me to do a lot of work and that’s

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about when I started to volunteer for the
library as well.

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Looking back I think that’s very significant
because it really introduced to me the concept

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of service for something that’s important
to me.

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I ran the summer reading program and I was
in charge of that for all the kids at the

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Calabazas Library.

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And I realized just how many kids in my community
alone came to the library on an hourly basis

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just to have somewhere to hang out or to spend
time with books and their friends.

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And it really was a safe area where they could
stay, where they could hang out, have access

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to internet or games or books or any of these
things that a lot of people take for granted

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in their lives and it was a very valuable
place for them to be able to be themselves.

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What really served as the catalyst for me
to start GROW was my learning of the bond

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measure that the city of San Jose setup for
the Calabazas Library, set aside money as

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a partial tax for the rebuilding of the library.

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So the building itself, the plumbing and that
kind of thing but all the things inside the

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library like the books, and the things of
that nature weren’t being provided for by

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the city itself, so they needed money for
that.

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Jane Light: Well Vikram and with GROW came
to our foundation with this great idea, that

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he wanted to raise funds but he had a specific
idea which was with some of his friends put

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on a concert of kind of classical Indian music,
getting the musicians who were quite well

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known in the area to donate their time and
to sell tickets and raise I think it was around

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$2500 on the event.

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But it was a really great example to us of
the whole community coming together to make

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it possible to have the new branch open.

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Early on we recognized that our city just
does not have the tax basis some of the cities

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around us have and it was unlikely that we
were ever going to have the kind of per capita

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support they have.

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On the other hand, when I first came 15 years
ago our business was going up 15 and 20% a

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year.

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And it’s tripled since I have been there
so we realized that we were never going to

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triple our staff, we are going to figure our
some ways to deliver service to our community

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with kind of what we have.

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And so we have really focused on figuring
out ways to be both more efficient and maintain

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our efficient, effectiveness at the same time.

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In some libraries, when people, library director
say well lets go to self check out and lets

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do self service there is a lot of resistance,
I don’t want to lose my job, our library

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was like thank heaven someone has an idea
and they leapt forward to try it and were

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quite willing to try it and its widely successful
96% of the items are checked out by the customers

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themselves.

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Freeing our remaining staff to work on things
that really add value to help people who are

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looking for specific things and need help.

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And that began us the whole stream of things
that became more ways to be efficient for

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us and now other libraries come to see us
and we actually charge a consulting fee for

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libraries to come and see what we are doing.

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So its something we are very proud of because
we think a lots of libraries can do it and

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it’s actually kind of an obligation to every
year become a little more efficient and yet

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keep your effectiveness, just as the voter
should expect us to do that and something

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I think all of us who work in the library,
all the volunteers are pretty proud of the

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way we have gone about it.
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