{"id":61429,"date":"2015-04-23T08:00:22","date_gmt":"2015-04-23T12:00:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/?p=61429"},"modified":"2015-04-22T17:40:52","modified_gmt":"2015-04-22T21:40:52","slug":"profile-of-mid-york-library-system","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/?p=61429","title":{"rendered":"Profile of Mid York Library System"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"MYLS\"<\/a>(April 2015) The Mid York Library System is located in Utica, NY. Centrally located in the Mohawk Valley, it is a cooperative public library system and its mission is to \u201cimprove and expand library service in the counties of Madison, Oneida, and Herkimer. Mid York\u2019s chartered to serve population is 372,839 residents located within a geographic area of 3,279 square miles.<\/p>\n

Mid York, its 43 member libraries and one reading center,are fortunate to be located in a beautiful part of New York State,enriched by the vibrant and diverse communities we are charted to serve. As Utica is also the home to the Mohawk Valley Resource Center for Refugees,in a local elementary school alone, over 40 languages are spoken.<\/p>\n

The libraries are unique as the communities they serve. A sampling includes a Carnegie library (Canastota Public Library) ; one located on the path of the famous yellow brick road (Sullivan Free Library in Chittenango) ; another houses an Egyptian mummy (Cazenovia Public Library), while another was dedicated by President Theodore Roosevelt in 1908 (Jordanville Library). Regardless of any special distinction, each library is universally valued and recognized by the people they serve as community and information centers.<\/p>\n

In 2014, Mid York in collaboration with its libraries and community partners, hosted acommunity read program, themed Grassroots Read<\/em>. Instead of the typical community read approach of using a single book, Grassroots Read<\/em> was unique in that three books were selected for three different reading levels. The Four County Library System partnered with Mid York in hosting its own Grassroots Read\u00a0<\/em>initiative in their service area. \u00a0The idea behind the locally themed\u00a0Grassroots <\/em>concept is to focus on a specific aspect of the region and to demonstrate that libraries provide information and programming that is interesting, exciting, and relevant to their local communities. \u00a0The 2014 Grassroots Read focus was local agriculture and the books selected were:<\/p>\n