It’s not Carol Grimes’s only job duty, but it’s the one that takes a lot of her time and produces big dividends for patrons in terms of enhanced services.

As planning and development coordinator for the Springfield-Greene County Library District, she develops, writes and helps implement grants for training, programming and digitization projects.

During the 2007-2008 fiscal year, grant funding to the Library totaled $117,421. Since 1998, the Library received more than $1.3 million through 65 grants.

“These grants give the Library District the opportunity to acquire additional equipment and provide services we might not be able to fund otherwise,” said Grimes. “And from a planning perspective, grants allow for outcome measurements and evaluations so that we are able to demonstrate the effectiveness of the projects.”

One of the grants, a Reading to Go program funded by a federal Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA) grant administered through the Missouri State Library, benefits children who spend their summer days in child care.

“The program is based on the premise that children whose parents work may not be able to easily get them to the library in the summer, so project staff work local agencies such as the Boys and Girls Clubs, the Springfield-Greene County Parks Department and others to visit the sites, administer the library’s summer reading club and leave collections of books.”

Another LSTA grant, funded in the same way, provides two semesters of teen programming at the Midtown Carnegie Branch. The popular young adult department, designated The Spot by the kids, on the second floor of the branch is a whirl of after-school activity where 575 teens took part in 46 special programs and tutorial sessions

Another after-school LSTA grant-funded program, Lego Connections, offer middle school students an interesting, challenging activity. “The students make decisions about what to build, using library search skills during the design phase of their project,” said Grimes. “They work together in large and small groups to turn their vision into reality.”

And for the history buffs and genealogists among us, another LSTA grant, “Community and Conflict: The Impact of the Civil War in the Ozarks,” gives library staff the means to collect and inventory local Civil War materials so that, in a subsequent grant, they can be digitized, placed on the library website and used the world over.

Jeanne C. Duffey, the community relations director for the Springfield-Greene County Library District, can be reached at jeanned@thelibrary.org.