Reading Resources Grant

Morton Library Receives National Grant for Small & Rural Libraries                           

The Morton Public Library has been selected as one of 310 libraries to participate round two of Libraries Transforming Communities: Accessible Small and Rural Communities, an American Library Association (ALA) initiative that provides community engagement and accessibility resources to small and rural libraries to help them better serve people with learning disabilities.

The competitive award comes with a $20,000 grant that will help the library increase access to resources to aid in learning and assist those with dyslexia and other reading processing difficulties. The library hopes to expand our playaway and wonderbooks collection, as well as outfitting our outreach van with a ramp and mobile bookshelves.

 As part of the grant, Morton Library staff will take an online course in how to lead conversations, a skill vital to library work today. Staff will then host a conversation with residents about dyslexia and use the grant funds to improve resources for struggling readers on Tuesday, April 30 at 6:30 pm at the Library.

If you are unable to attend the meeting, there is a survey for parents and a survey for educators. Grant Funding Public Survey and Grant Funding Educator Survey

The Morton Library has many reading tutors who use our library and they’ve asked for an increase in our audio collection, as well as the print and audio bound together. For many years the library hosted a summer program to help struggling readers keep up their skills and as we saw more children with reading processing challenges and dyslexia it became clear we needed to do more to serve this community.

If you are interested in getting involved or taking part in the conversation, please contact Ashely V at Ashley@mortonlibrary.org or visit www.mortonlibrary.org  for more information.

Libraries Transforming Communities: Accessible Small and Rural Communities is an initiative of the American Library Association (ALA) in collaboration with the Association for Rural and Small Libraries (ARSL).