First Lady Promotes School Libraries
at White House Conference
“Laura Bush had the basis for being a good librarian: She was a good teacher first,“said Medford, Oregon, school Superintendent Steve Wisely at the White House Conference on School Libraries June 4. Wisely was one of eight speakers selected by the First Lady to attest to the positive impact of good school libraries on student performance.
The First Lady delivered opening and closing remarks to the group, which also included her mother-in-law, former First Lady Barbara Bush, and Senators Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.), Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), and Jack Reed (D-R.I.). She announced that the Laura Bush Foundation for America’s Libraries, which she established last year, had raised more than $5 million.
“Library budgets, which are limited to begin with, are being stretched to their limits to accommodate printed material, electronic material, and computer equipment,” noted the First Lady.
“This is a landmark event,” said Institute of Museum and Library Services Director Robert Martin, “the first time in history that there has been a national conference, hosted at the White House, focusing on school libraries.” He said that the meeting was entirely the First Lady’s idea.
The other speakers included M. Christine DeVita, president of the Wallace–Reader’s Digest Funds; Vartan Gregorian, president of the Carnegie Corporation of New York; and Susan Neuman, assistant secretary for elementary and secondary education in the U.S. Department of Education. Some 175 school principals and administrators from around the country attended the invitational meeting.
Posted June 10, 2002.
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