The importance of literacy always begins at a young age, and with it being both Canadian Library Month, and Saskatchewan Library Week, West Central Literacy teaches kids and adults of all ages the importance of reading. 

West Central Online talked to Family Literacy Coordinator of the West Central Literacy Committee Tina McGonigal, and she talked about how she got involved with the program. 

“Initially just a personal love for libraries, but also just kind of a desire to emphasize the importance of libraries in rural communities. The things that they provide, they're one of the last safe warm spaces that literally cost nothing to use, just about all of them have free Internet and Wi-Fi, printers, scanners, tax type things. It's environmentally friendly our libraries because you're reusing books instead of just buying them once and then throwing them out or putting them on a shelf somewhere. And then all the additional programming and speakers and stuff like that that have come out to their libraries. They're great little resources in our community for a lot of literacy-based things.” 

McGonigal then explained how West Central Literacy got started. 

"We started in 2007, and initially it was at Books For Life, just getting books and literacy information to new parents. Then the various organizations that were involved with that, they decided we wanted to expand it into all ages. And then actually the Saskatchewan government about 10 years ago, decided to introduce hubs in certain regions. So, it was a pretty easy transition for us to become the West Central hub from the West Central Literacy Committee.” 

When asked about how the partnership with the west central libraries are going, McGonigal said the feature of having a new west central library every day on Facebook for Canadian Library Month, has been a success, making it a good partnership. 

“It's going great so far. I've only been in this coordinator position for a couple months, so I'm kind of working with the existing connections that we already had, and then kind of looking to grow new ones with other libraries. There are 28 libraries in our West Central Literacy region.” 

McGonigal then talked about the main goal of West Central Literacy. 

“Our initial goal will always be promoting literacy. We start right from when kids are born sort of thing, we have books for life that mothers get in the hospital before they leave. And then continuing from that we have preschool programming like Come Read With Me and One, Two, Buckle My Shoe, which is actually a numeracy program which starts as early as two or three working on numbers and counting.  It’s amazing how young kids can pick up really kind of complex algebra type things without even realizing what they're doing. But mostly we just want to support caregivers through those crucial first of five years, and then we also do stuff through school years and even into adults like the new to Canada with learning the English language. So, we're kind of all over the place, if it involves literacy, we got our fingers in it.” 

McGonigal then gave some information about Canadian Library Month. 

“Canadian Library Month essentially is the month-long celebration of libraries across Canada. It's a great way to raise awareness for the important role that they play in all of our communities. And this year's theme is one card, one million possibilities.  Which is kind of great within Saskatchewan, because we are one of the few places where one library card can be used Saskatchewan wide. Our interlibrary loan system is province wide, so one card does get you a million possibilities within Saskatchewan.” 

Canadian Library Month runs throughout the month of October, and Saskatchewan Library Week runs from October 17 to 23.