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[Music]
the national medal for Museum and

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Library Services is the nation's highest
honor for libraries and museums that are

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serving their communities in exceptional
ways Marshall Town Public Library

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director Sarah Rosen Bloom and Community
member Veronica Gua traveled to

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Washington from Marshall toown Iowa to
receive the national medal and spoke to

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imls about how the library impacts the
community well the Marshal Public

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Library is in um nestled in the fields
of central Iowa and it's an amazing

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community of 27,500 people and it's seen
a huge change a huge shift in the the

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Dem the demographics in our community
and I think the library has really risen

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to the challenge of kind of bridging our
um our older community and then our

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newer Community which about 20 years ago
um really started to change dramatically

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we're almost 25% Latino and now we have
a growing Burmese community and really

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the library is one of the first places
that these new immigrants seem to come

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to and we welcome that we're we're
thrilled that we're able to help them a

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number of our residents you know did not
complete high school and so we've

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recognized that and so we offer uh an
online database that can help them study

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with that we work with the training
Education and Training Center um we want

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people to be able to come to the library
better themselves so they they can you

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know they can do better and we see a lot
of that in our community the public

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library has an immense ability to change
people's lives and improve their lives

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but I think in a smaller Community
Library we are very invested in our

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community and our community members um
we we very my staff knows most of our

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users by name they know their children
and their family and I think that um we

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we take a real interest and we want to
help all the members of our community my

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parents are originally from the state of
met Tran in Mexico so um I'm first

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generation and uh I grew up in a
household where Spanish was the primary

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language and actually still is I started
working at the public library my

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sophomore year of high school I believe
so I was

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15 um and um so I would I worked at the
library so I spent quite a bit of time

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there and even if I didn't work I found
it just a nice place to go and study or

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read and be peaceful um so I I would go
to the library for that and um as I got

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older and uh
started going to college I would also

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study there and it became kind of a my
study

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place the emerge program at the Marshal
toown Public Library was started about

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10 or 11 years ago and it's a wonderful
program in conjunction with the public

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school and each sixth grader um comes to
the library every month during the sixth

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grade year and they work with our youth
services department um we do special

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programs we teach them about all the
resources we have lots of fun but we

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also also want to get them at sixth
grade so that they we can lay that

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foundation so as they move into junior
high and high school that they know that

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there's these wonderful resources that
can help them be

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successful this kind of dovetails in
with lots of other projects in our

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community we have a where if kids um we
we know that there's there's scholarship

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assistance available for them to go to
our community college and so these are

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all things that we want to help them or
prepare them for the library helped me

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many different ways um and in my college
career um I attended the community

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college in Marshall toown for two years
and close to the end of my career there

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I was uh very nervous about finding
resources and scholarships for uh the

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university and um I asked I remember
asking just how to even go about

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searching for things I wasn't really
sure how to even start looking for

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scholarships and they introduced me to
different scholarship books and um I

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applied for a lot of them um one that I
remember remember then I can't really

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forget is um the Congressional Hispanic
caucus Institute scholarship I applied

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for that I think um in 2011 and I
received the scholarship and that kind

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of uh opened the doors to um being uh
becoming aware of the internship and I

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wasn't I wasn't so sure about um the
chances of actually getting this

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internship since it was a competition on
on the national level and uh surely

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enough I ended up getting that um
internship that I completed last fall

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actually and I really don't think my um
I would have been able to obtain that

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without the library and with the without
the library's resources and um the help

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of the staff so it's that classic
American story of people came over here

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in that first generation and they worked
hard um so that their children can go to

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college just like Veronica and and the
library plays a part in that and like

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and Veronica talked about her experience
of finding resources there there are so

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many res sources out there but so many
people don't know where to turn and I

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think the library we do I think a very
good job of helping people um get in

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touch with these resources um the
Congressional Hispanic caucus Institute

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um what they do is they bring you into
Washington and they help you find a

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placement on the hill whether mostly it
is um with the house but um a few people

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end up um in the Senate side and they
bring you they pay for your

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transportation and your housing and it's
a paid internship and they just really

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help you network and um see what DC life
is about so really for me the metal is

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showcasing the work that we've done in
the past and the ongoing work and

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getting the recognition we are a small
Library we're we're not a large Library

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we don't have a a a big staff but we do
amazing programs we just work really

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hard um and it's great though to get the
recognition it's great for Iowa we're

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very much part of the community and I
and I I really love that that