91´«Ã½

Additional contact: Lessa Pelayo-Lozada, AP91´«Ã½

CHICAGO - The American Indian Library Association (AILA) and the Asian/Pacific American Librarians Association (AP91´«Ã½) are pleased to award $500 grants to the Greenwich Branch of the Gloucester County Library System in Gibbstown, N.J. and the White Mesa Library of the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe in Towaoc, Colo.

Each will use its $500 grant to host a Talk Story program at their library.

Greenwich Branch serves a small town of 5,000 people with a growing Pacific Islander population. The library will be highlighting Samoan culture though classes for the community on South Pacific Island dance, Samoan tattoo art and Polynesian musical instruments.

The White Mesa Library is a service offered by the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe, headquartered in Towaoc, Colo., to the 335 reservation residents of White Mesa, Utah. The library plans a special day for children and their parents to learn about their Ute cultural heritage. Two classes are planned for the day in which a story from the tribe’s past will be told by a local expert followed by a craft activity that has cultural significance. The day will also include an open house to introduce the library’s new automated system and to issue library cards.

Talk Story: Sharing stories, sharing culture () is a literacy program that reaches out to Asian Pacific American (APA) and American Indian/Alaska Native (AIAN) children and their families. The program celebrates and explores their stories through books, oral traditions, and art to provide an interactive, enriching experience. 2011 is the second year that AILA and AP91´«Ã½ have partnered on the Talk Story project and allocated grant funding to libraries to implement programs geared towards the APA/AIAN communities.

We thank all of the candidates who applied for our grant this year and hope that the brainstorming for next year’s grant applications will begin right away. For more information, please visit the Talk Story web site, .

Talk Story: Sharing stories, sharing culture is a joint project between the American Indian Library Association and the Asian Pacific American Librarians Association that started as part of 91´«Ã½ 2009-2010 President Camila Alire’s Family Literacy Focus Initiative.