The Moraine Valley Community College Library is one of 24 projects selected to receive a My Library Is… Grant from the Reaching Across Illinois Library System (RAILS). Moraine Valley received $5,000, the maximum amount awarded, for its project, “My Library Is… Connecting Communities and Cultures,” and was one of only two community college recipients.
My Library Is… grants provide an opportunity for libraries to focus on projects that help tell their institution’s unique story and increase visibility and support for libraries in general. The initiative was developed by RAILS to help Illinois libraries tell their stories and prove their value.
The Moraine Valley Library applied for grant funding to create a foreign language collection. Tish Hayes, information literacy librarian in the college’s Learning Resource Center, who submitted the grant application shared, “I think this speaks directly to the community here at Moraine Valley. Instead of just collecting a bunch of different languages, we’re really focusing on two of our communities here that we know are large components of our community outside of the college. Focusing it [the collection] on Spanish and Arabic, I think, is really key.”
The college’s English as a Second Language Program serves students from over 40 countries. In fall 2023, approximately 28% of the college’s students identified as Hispanic and 6% identified as Middle Eastern/North African (MENA). Funding allows the Library to purchase titles that originate in Spanish and Arabic, as well as English language translations for a small percentage of those titles.
The Library historically has not collected print or electronic books in languages other than English and saw an opportunity to better serve the community by recognizing diverse language needs. Shared reading experiences created by the collection also will lead to deeper cross-cultural understandings.
The collection will provide resources for heritage learners looking to develop their language skills to connect more deeply with their families and culture. Additionally, students and community members who recently arrived in the United States can benefit from the updated collection. “I think a huge part of this is just the experience of walking into the Library, making sure that it is a place where people feel like they belong – they feel comfortable,” Hayes shared.
In the grant application, Hayes explained, “Although the Library offers many resources for developing English skills and online resources for speakers of many languages, there is a real lack of physical items in languages other than English. Having books in Spanish and Arabic that can be displayed, checked out and centered in programming creates a more welcoming space —a physical acknowledgement that the Library is a place where Spanish and Arabic speakers belong.”
Hayes shared that the Library is hopeful to make the collection available to students and the community in spring 2026.
RAILS provides services to more than 1,200 academic, public, school and specialized library agencies in northern and west-central Illinois.
For news media inquiries, contact Madisson Younglove, Moraine Valley assistant director of Communications, at (708) 974-5281 or younglovem2@morainevalley.edu.
