Good news comes in threes for L.B. library

Good news comes in threes for L.B. library
Virtual career center will be state model
BY KENNY WALTER Staff Writer

LONG BRANCH — The Long Branch Public Library has been awarded a $50,000 grant from the New Jersey State Library.

The grant was given to the library on June 9 to implement, strengthen and expand the capability of library staff in the areas of job seeking, unemployment and related services to library customers.

These services will include a model career center computer lab, a virtual career center and in-person as well as virtual training in the use of online resources.

Long Branch Library Director Ingrid Bruck said that the grant money is one of three pieces of good news the library received in June.

"We had three pieces of good news recently," Bruck said. "We got the grant money, but we also found out that New Jersey Natural Gas [NJNG] will be purchasing some computers for $10,000 and that the state will use our virtual career center as a model on the statewide level."

Bruck explained that the grant funds will help people qualify for jobs in the community.

T

he money will ultimately be used to

fund a teacher and state-of-the-art computers to help with the training class.

"The state library funded a teacher so we can have classes for people without jobs," Bruck said. "We got the grant so we can use it on a teacher and equipment."

Bruck said a teacher has not been officially named yet.

The class will begin in the middle of July and run 16 weeks. There will be 12 people attending the class, according to Bruck, and the goal of the class is to get people re-employed.

"The focus of the class will be helping people getting back to work," Bruck said.

The 15 new computers will be purchased using the grant money to replace the computers purchased by NJNG.

Bruck said replacing the computers was very necessary.

"The computers were seven years old and inadequate," Bruck said. "They didn't have USB ports and couldn't burn CDs. Things we really needed.

"Now we will have state-of-the-art computers to assist people," she added.

While the grant money and the career center news was somewhat expected, according to Bruck, the news about NJNG was a surprise to her.

"New Jersey Natural Gas taking our computers for $10,000 was a surprise," Bruck said. "We didn't expect that to happen at all."

The news of the grant and the upcoming class go hand in hand with the news about the virtual career center being used as a statewide model.

"Anyone in the state can use our virtual career center," Bruck said.

Bruck explained the focus of the career center.

"We take resources and bring them to the Long Branch level," Bruck said. "We make some of these resources accessible to the community."

What the career center does is link job seekers to various helpful resources in the community, such as places to apply for jobs and links to the local universities.

"We have about a 100 links up there," Bruck said. "We make everything local.

"You go on and apply for a job at Kmart because Kmart is a store in our community," Bruck said. "We took a big haystack and made it navigable.

"We have links to classes at Monmouth and Brookdale because those are the universities in our community." One of the aspects of the career center that Bruck is most proud of is the work that Diversity and Literacy Coordinator Tanya Badillo has done.

According to Bruck, Badillo has done a lot of work with the career center especially helping out with making it accessible for minorities.

"For Latinos in the community it may be harder for them to find jobs," Bruck said.

Also, the library is a place where ex-offenders come and look for opportunities.

"Ex-offenders come to the library a lot with no jobs and no money," Bruck said.

With the economy being down, the library has seen a boom in popularity.

"We have about 2,500 users each month use the computers," Bruck said.

She noted that the career center was not a reaction to the down economy.

"We were ready in August before everything crashed," Bruck said. "No one expected it to be as bad as it's been.

"We hope to get people back to work."

The library has worked with the Long Branch Concordance, as well as Monmouth Medical Center and Monmouth University in forming a committee to help people during the economic downturn.

More information about the library and the career center can be found at http://www.lmxac.org/longbranch/.

Contact Kenny Walter at

Kwalter@gmnews.com.


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