Literacy for All: Adult Literacy @ your library - Successful and Replicable Library Literacy Programs

Across the country, in large and small communities, libraries are providing effective and replicable services and programs for adult learners. The specifics of how these programs are developed, implemented, staffed, and administered depends a great deal on the library’s mission, goals, capacity, and the community’s literacy resources. 

 

The following examples illustrate library literacy in action. Their programs, services, and collective wisdom offer service models worthy of consideration and adaptation.  

 

The Queens Library’s Adult Learner Program (ALP) provides services, resources, and life-long learning opportunities to the changing communities of Queens.

 

Detroit Public Library’s Detroit Reads! Program is a free, library system-wide initiative that pairs its own trained and certified tutors with adult learners who desire to learn to read or improve their reading skills.

 

Since its founding in 1986, the mission of Literacy Link has been to teach reading and writing skills to functionally illiterate adults, ages 18 and over, in Eastern Oklahoma County.

 

In Syracuse, the library works closely with the abundance of literacy service providers in the community.  

 

Through Project Read, the adult literacy program of the San Francisco Public Library, professionally trained volunteer tutors provide free one-on-one tutoring to English-speaking adults who want to improve their basic reading and writing skills.

 

Project Read is a public library/community college partnership serving adults with less than a 9th grade education with one-on-one tutoring in literacy and math at the library. 

 

The mission of the Literacy Program of Greater Plymouth is to provide adults in the greater Plymouth area the opportunity to develop and improve the life skills and literacy skills needed to achieve personal growth, to further their education, to seek better employment, and to benefit their overall quality of life.

 

The purpose of Read/Write/Now is to help adults living in the greater Springfield area to achieve their basic education goals as family members, workers and community members.

 

The Will Rogers Library collaborates with the Rogers County Literacy Council to provide adult literacy services in Claremore, Oklahoma.  The Council is a member of the Oklahoma Literacy Coalition and ProLiteracy and is a Rogers County United Way agency.

 

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