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The
road to the award began when Long Beach Public
Library participated in the California State
Library’s (CSL’s) “Public Library Services
for People with Disabilities” program, a
two-year, $1.4 million project that helped
public libraries improve their services to
people with disabilities. Funded by the Library
Services and Technology Act, participating
libraries worked with their communities during
2002/03 to identify the best ways to do that.
The
award-winning result of the California State
Library’s training was Long Beach Public
Library’s Information Center for People with
Disabilities that opened October 21, 2003 during
Disabilities Awareness Month. The Friends of the
Library built the 420-square-foot Center in the
Main Library that includes state-of-the-art
computers with adaptive technology, a printer, a
scanner, and a variety of assistive devices. The
Center also houses a reading area with books for
adults and children, videos, and magazines on
topics related to disabilities.
The
Long Beach Center empowers people with
disabilities. In its first year alone, the
Center served over 1533 people who, for the
first time in their lives, used computers and
accessed the Internet, retrieved library
materials from shelves, and read books without
assistance.
The
Center can actually change lives. Bill had
thought that education and employment were over
for him after an accident fifteen years ago left
him paralyzed from the neck down. After using a
computer with only his eyes at the Center,
though, Bill went on to enroll in Long Beach
City College’s distance learning degree
program and now plans to become a computer
designer.
To
further the Center’s mission, Long Beach
Library has adapted its policies, such as
extending loan periods, to reflect the needs of
people with disabilities. Further, the library
now identifies services for people with
disabilities as one of its “core services”
and plans to expand the program to its branches,
creating mini-centers in each.
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