Pocono News Section

Children's Library On Track in Lycoming County

Children's Library On Track in Lycoming County - Friday, September 21, 2007 at 5:01PM EST

Reported by: Lorena Beniquez
Friday, Sep 21, 2007 @05:01pm EST

WILLIAMSPORT, LYCOMING COUNTY - The James V. Brown library in Williamsport let kids take part in the ground breaking for their five million dollar children's wing. This comes as they celebrate their 100th anniversary. Janice Trapp with the James v. Brown library said, "This is a wonderful birthday present and we actually started working on this on our 90th birthday so it took us about ten years to get to this moment." The wing will be three floors high with 26,000 square feet. Tom Dempsey spent years helping to fundraise for the library. "You educate children to read by third grade so they can read to learn after third grade. And one of the difficult things we've had in education has been getting kids to read by third grade,” said Dempsey. The library will have state of the art technology to make learning easier. "There is going to be a lot computer based learning for the youngsters. Computer labs for the tweenagers and teenagers and the literacy students are going to get computer based instruction," said Trapp. The children's wing is set to open in 2009 but the kids attending the groundbreaking are hoping it will be sooner. Forty-five minutes after the ceremony, the kids continue to dig. One of them revealed, “We’re just trying to give the construction workers a good head start. If we didn't, the workers, they wouldn't get the job done faster."