‘Reading' a success

WESLACO — The Weslaco Public Library had a successful run with its Summer Reading Program with at least 1,000 participants, library Director Arnoldo Becho, said.

He now looks forward to the future and hopes the library’s first Winter Reading Program will be just as successful.

Becho has been with the library for four months but says there has been much progress in the time he has been there, although Hurricane Alex cost a week’s worth of events.

“We broke records in total event attendance, even though we lost a week,” Becho said.

“If you compare the number of books that were read and the number of pages read to last years, we tripled the number.”

The summer events included: story times, movie showings, crafts, reading competitions and an awards assembly. The library’s Summer Reading Program Statistics show that 2,774 books were read in 2009, while 7,129 books were read in 2010.

Becho hopes the building of a new facility that will turn the library into a social location that community members will visit more often.

“To make it more of a social area, we are going to add a 3,000 square foot building to the library,” Becho said. “It’s going to be in a building adjacent to the library and should be opening up in about a month.”

The director said the building will have a café type of social setting set with computers and a laptop friendly environment. He says he is also excited for the library’s first ever Winter Reading Program to take place during the Christmas break.

“We want to add a lot more adult-oriented programs during the fall,” Becho said. “What we want to do is begin to gather stories of the history behind Weslaco and digitize them into video format and have them posted up on the internet.”

The library will host historians and story tellers beginning in October to recount Weslaco’s past and Becho says he would like to have it run from fall to spring.

The director is very pleased with his staff and says they are excited to do more. He said the community can “expect a lot from them.”

“Our two main goals are to get more children to read and engage them within the library,” Becho said.