We Serve Every Day

We Serve Every Day

At the Everett Public Library (WA), we have been able to significantly respond to the Every Day needs of our service population as a direct result of our receipt of Microsoft products, especially those we have acquired through Tech Soup.

Everett Public Library’s commitment to community is codified in its recent (2008) Strategic Plan. Specifically, our Community Strategic Initiative states that the Library is committed to enriching the quality of life for Everett residents through our services, community outreach programs, and partnerships. In order to meet our library customers' expectations and to serve Everett’s economically and socially diverse, yet changing population, we must make 21st century technology available.

According to the U.S. 2007 Census, 13% of Everett’s residents live beneath the poverty line (compared with 8% in surrounding Snohomish County). Roughly half of the families in Everett are headed by a single female. Partly because our service community is less affluent, it has less access to technology overall.

Thanks to Tech Soup, the Everett Public Library now provides vastly greater access to the technologies that our community needs everyday: for example, we are proud to be able to say that the Microsoft Office Suite is available on a walk-up basis anytime during public service hours. As a direct result of donated licenses, we have increased the availability of the MS Office Suite by 56%. In 2010, with additional licenses from Tech Soup, we will further increase public access by another third. To our patrons, this will translate into access to vital, core services being available at all times.

In 1943, noted American Psychologist Abraham Maslow introduced his Hierarchy of Human Needs. Moving in order from immediate to less immediate, the order of needs he identified were physiological, safety, love/belonging, esteem, and self-actualization. The 2nd category, very high on the list of life importance, includes the securing of employment and resources. At the Everett Public Library, we believe that these Every Day Needs, while common amongst all populations, while not wildly spectacular, are significantly important to the present and future successes of our community. In fact, we believe that access to securing employment and resources is exactly the type of thing that can make a startling difference; it can mean the difference between a better quality of life and a worse one.

Therefore, we feel fortunate to have been able to maximize our mission delivery and increase the effectiveness of our organization through our ability to offer increased access to Microsoft products. The Library is a community hub, a resource of Maslow’s 2nd tier variety that allows users to easily conduct Every Day activities such as creating a resume in MS Word ; attend a class offered by a library staff member trained in career resources ; creating a household or entrepreneurial budget in MS Excel ; contacting employers and loved ones via MS Internet Explorer. We believe that these free resources have allowed the Everett Public Library to expand our organization’s response and reach to the Every Day needs of our community.