By Miriam Meza –
Wonder where the Aurora Public Library is with their strategic plan? Didn’t really know the Library had a vision or simply wondering where our initiatives stem? Here’s a quick overview of our 2017-2020 strategic goals and update.
Our vision and strategic plan has four pillars as a foundation: School success, express creativity, feed your imagination, and welcome to America. School success is dedicated to help teachers, students, and parents succeed from early literacy to high school. Express creativity is designed to provide services and support for residents, businesses, and schools in an effort to promote creativity and creation through different types of media including audio, video, and photography. Through the feed your imagination pillar, the Library is devoted to providing materials, programs, and services to customers seeking resources of interest to them, as well as fostering a reading culture in Aurora. Welcome to America provides greater access to information on citizenship, English language-learning, employment, public schools, health and safety, and social services.
Since the completion of our second year of this three-year strategic plan, we have accomplished many things! Here’s a snippet of our 2018 update: School Success improved the monthly newsletter which goes out to every teacher in all the districts we serve, provided marketing materials for teachers to hang in their classrooms and attended 41 outreach events within the community. Teacher loans, a loan program tailored for teachers and their students, increased by more than 20%! Feed Your Imagination will be unleashing a United We Read initiative in the Fall, and the selected read will be unveiled soon. Stay tuned and read along!
Welcome to America increased the amount of citizenship and GED materials, including our citizenship corners at all our locations. English classes and citizenships classes taught by the College of DuPage met twice weekly January through May and had 24 attendees. Seven of those students went on to take a citizenship test, and they all passed! In addition, this pillar was dedicated to celebrating the diversity within our community, including by holding storytimes in different languages, a culture fair, and a Diwali celebration! The Express Creativity pillar was a partner with East Aurora School District 131 to provide a 10-week long after school program series, did show-and-tell demos utilizing our Makerspace equipment at outreach events, and expanded their portfolio on ways customers can personalize their items.
For more information about our strategic plan or to watch a video with our updates, please visit our website at aurorapubliclibrary.org. Stay tuned for more updates on each pillar.
Miriam Meza is communications manager for Aurora Public Library.
