KENT COUNTY, Mich. — Many are giving thanks to a librarian with Grand Rapids Community College (GRCC), not just for her work with the library at GRCC, but for the hundreds of volunteer hours she put in for another very important library.
“The library has always been a big part of one of our services here that we provide the young people,” said Huemartin Robinson II, the assistant superintendent with the Kent County Juvenile Detention Center.
Chris Fillwock is the program director at the facility. He said, “I think it’s given just another avenue and aspect to these young peoples’ lives, that, hey, there’s a lot more out there than just playing on our phones. We can actually read and get some inspiration or different knowledge from other avenues.”
Of course, the young residents do not have access to cell phones and have limited TV time. This leaves books as a main outlet when free time is available.
The center houses youth between the ages of 10 and 18. This is a crucial time for education, but the library at the detention center needed some work.
“The system we were using before was all handwritten. We were still using our old library card, ‘hey, write your name on here and what unit you’re on and check it in. We’ll put it in this bin and hopefully we can find it later,'” said Fillwock.
That’s when GRCC librarian Sophia Ward Brewer came to mind.
“I just emailed her and just asked her if she would be willing to maybe just come in and take a look at our library, maybe provide us with some suggestions,” said Robinson.
Ward Brewer told 13 ON YOUR SIDE, “I immediately thought, oh yeah, I can help them with that because that’s what I do.”
Initially, Robinson was just hoping for some ideas from Ward Brewer.
“Then she wanted to sponsor us for it and then they came in and started cataloging all our books and found out that we have over like 6,000 books here,” said Robinson.
Ward Brewer explained that GRCC faculty members have the option to take part in various substantive projects. Ward Brewer chose the detention center library as her project and GRCC sponsored its completion.
Led by Ward Brewer, several faculty members also helped to organize a book drive, which brought in more than 1,200 books.
“They were here for countless hours, more times than I could ever ask. It was way more than I ever even envisioned: Weekends, holidays, weeknights, during the weekdays, Fridays, Saturdays, Sundays, anything that you can imagine,” said Fillwock.
More than 250 volunteer hours were dedicated to this project.
Ward Brewer expressed her excitement for the changes, saying, “Now, when a student comes in or a resident comes in and they want a book, say on basketball, they have a system that they can look in and type in the word basketball and give them their options for basketball. Before, they would have to scan the shelves to see whether or not they had books on basketball.”
“My goal was to be efficient and make it seamless and Sophia was able to give us all of that,” said Fillwock.
Ward Brewer leaving us with this saying, “Books are windows, doors and sliding doors. So, they are opportunities for people to open up and expand their minds.”
The library at the detention center had been in such bad shape they had to shut it down. After this year-long overhaul, the library was able to reopen a few weeks ago.
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