Making the Library a Youth Hang-Out : Renovated Santa Ana Facility Is Meant to Be Inviting Refuge for Eager Minds

The Santa Ana Public Library has begun its second century of service by unveiling a remodeled Central Library in the Civic Center. It has more light, a new children’s room and new, shorter stacks of metal shelves that put books within a child’s reach.

The renovation has made the main library more attractive and more convenient to use. The goal now is to attract more people, especially young students, to read more and spend more time using library facilities.

That’s a worthy goal for every community. It becomes even more important in Santa Ana, where school dropout rates are high and school reading scores leave room for improvement. A library invites youngsters into the world of books. That can open the door to knowledge--and close the door to joblessness and poverty.

The Central Library in Santa Ana also has one of finest reference sections in Orange County and has become a regular stop for many workers and visitors at the Civic Center. Unfortunately, residents and students are not as aware of the treasures stored there as they ought to be. That’s a situation the library is actively seeking to correct.

Library officials are working much more closely with the Santa Ana Unified School District. They have a tutoring program at the Newhope Branch Library. They are promoting reading clubs. They have begun a campaign at Century High School aimed at issuing every student a library card. And realizing that many students come from large families and live in crowded quarters that make studying difficult, the library is urging students to visit its branches and take advantage of resources and research.

To serve Santa Ana’s growing multilingual population, the library now stocks books in both Spanish and Vietnamese, has bilingual story times and a Spanish-language bookmobile service that takes reading material into the Latino community.

Andrew Carnegie, a wealthy industrialist who believed in helping people help themselves, valued libraries so much he established more than 2,500 of them throughout the world.

Robert Richard, Santa Ana’s library director, also believes that the library can play an important role not only in improving the quality of young people’s education but the quality of their life.

He’s right. What’s so exciting in Santa Ana is not just that the remodeled Central Library is open, but the new worlds that the library can open for young eager minds in its second century of service.