This year, I spent some engaging hours photographing the annual report for the Westchester Library System. This organization's mission is to support its members, the 38 public libraries of Westchester County by providing infrastructure, notably maintaining the technology employed by the individual libraries and cataloging of new acquisitions, the delivery system that moves over 2,000,000 titles on the request of its patrons (the residents of Westchester County through inter-library loan) along with countless programs; including training for GED tutors, medicare and health care counselors. I especially enjoyed photographing the Learning Ambassadors Program which allowed 21 high school students from eight libraries to work at their local library under the guidance of a librarian. For most of these teens, it was their first real world job. The list of WLS good works goes on and on. Pat Braja, WLS's talented director of development gave me great guidance as to what they hoped to document. Through her, I got to witness a lot of special moments.
I met the director of WLS, Terry Kirchner, at an event a few years earlier, where we first discussed the possibility of our working together- so I asked him to add a few lines about the work I created for this year's report below.....
"Working with Dorothy has been a wonderful process –her enthusiasm and passion are contagious, and she made all of us feel comfortable as she visually recorded our stories. Dorothy helped us to view our world from a new perspective and we look forward to working with her on future projects."
Your photos are wonderful! And that Learning Ambassadors program sounds like such a great thing for high school students. I'd love for my kids to get involved in something like that.
ReplyDeleteThanks for your kind words about my photos! The Learning Ambassadors is a great program for high schoolers that runs during the summer- something to look in to at your local library this spring.
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