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In communities across the United Sates morning headlines bombard readers with stories that provoke strong emotional responses. We process these stories and then move on with the demands in our own lives. But what happens to the people in these stories that we leave behind?
In terms of teens and their stories, what does it really mean that there is a large percentage of youth affected by some of the events covered in national news stories - growing unemployment or drastic cuts to education? What does it mean for teens when we read stories about the repercussions of growing crime rates on families and the safety of their neighborhoods? These are societal problems, but they impact individuals and their families in significant ways. Teens react to these by sharing their life stories with friends or in their school communities, and there's a common experience that is a part of our national consciousness, within this age group, that needs to be documented. Sacramento Public Library is facilitating this by empowering teens to publish their own stories with the help of twenty-first century technology.
Our program, "Preserving Our Present," is supported by the U.S. Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA) and administered in California by the State Librarian. Sacramento Public Library is the fourth largest library system in California and is unique in that it serves suburban, urban, and rural populations across its twenty-eight branches. The ethnic and...