NB 560
May 11, 2005
FREDERICTON (CNB) - All preschool children attending a registered day care in New Brunswick are being provided with a public library card, Education Minister Madeleine Dubé and Family and Community Services Minister Tony Huntjens announced today.
This initiative, developed in partnership with Family and Community Services, New Brunswick Public Library Service and the New Brunswick Public Libraries Foundation, has as its objective to get preschoolers who are attending registered daycares to visit their local library or bookmobile with their parents to activate the card and to make use of the more than 1.9 million books, videos, CDs, DVDs and other materials in their collections.
"This is an enormously important initiative that supports our Quality Learning Agenda commitment to assist parents in ensuring their children are well-prepared to learn by the time they start school," Dubé said. "By targeting children at an early age, we will be able to place them on the track to a lifetime of success."
"Young children and their families are a priority of government and, we are committed to continuing our investment in programs and services supporting early childhood development," Huntjens said. "This project will tap into our existing preschool programs and continue to provide resources to help children be ready to learn how to read."
In addition to providing library cards to preschool children in registered daycares, cards will also be distributed through the Born to Read / Le goût de lire bags given to parents of newborns at the hospital.
Combined with recent undertakings to give every kindergarten student a library card, this will ensure that targeted public library card campaigns have been aimed at children from birth through high school over the past 14 months.
In just over a year, more than 12,000 of the library cards distributed to schools have been activated, and the percentage of New Brunswickers with a public library card has increased to 40.5 per cent from 36.9 per cent between April 1, 2004 and March 31, 2005.
05/05/11
MEDIA CONTACTS: Jason Humphrey or Hugues Beaulieu, Education, 506 444-4714; Robert Duguay, Family and Community Services, 506 444-3684.
05/05/11