Laramie County Library System will receive $145,000 from the American Library Association (ALA) to build capacity and expand their programming to small businesses and entrepreneurs from low-income and underrepresented groups. Laramie County Library System is one of 13 public libraries around the country to receive this funding from Libraries Build Business, an initiative of the American Library Association funded by Google.org. Google.org has invested $2 million to begin the initiative. This grant — made as part of the tech company’s Grow with Google initiative to create opportunity to all — will also create learning resources for any library to support entrepreneurs in its community.
“Laramie County Library System is excited to continue building our Library 2 Business services,” the system’s Executive Director Carey Hartmann said. “The Libraries Build Business Grant gives us the opportunity to further develop our program, to ensure our communities know about it, and to continue our work of sharing our business resource expertise with other libraries in the state. Libraries have so much to offer entrepreneurs, start-ups, and growing small businesses, and the role libraries play in the economic health of a community will be in the spotlight as this project progresses.”
The Libraries Build Business grant will help Laramie County Library System build a robust program called Wyoming Libraries to Business (WL2B) that connects women-owned and rural businesses to critical resources for business growth and development. WL2B will expand outreach services in Laramie County by providing one-on-one consultations with business owners in the library’s rural branches, install a space for video production and marketing photography in the Cheyenne library, and eventually expand its service model to libraries across the state.
Learn more about this project as it progresses and about LCLS’s Library 2 Business (L2B) resources and services.