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Golden Spike Exhibit, Educational Opportunities For Spanish Speakers Coming To Park City Library

Park City Municipal Corporation

The Park City Library is gearing up its programming for spring and summer. 

Utah is celebrating the 150th anniversary of the driving of the Golden Spike, marking the completion of the Transcontinental Railroad. To commemorate the occasion, the Park City Library will be hosting an exhibit from Stanford University called “The Chinese Helped Build the Railroad, The Railroad Helped Build America.” The exhibit is currently making its way through the Summit County Library System.

The Park City Library is also partnering with Park City Film for a screening of the documentary, “The Chinese Exclusion Act.” Both the exhibit and the film showcase the history and contributions of the Chinese immigrants who built the railroad.

For kids, Youth Services Librarian Katrina Kmak says they’ll have a chance to learn about the railroad at 10 a.m. story time, too.

“If you come to a storytime in May, Thursdays, I’ll definitely be doing some railroad-themed storytimes as well.”

The Library is also bringing on more Spanish programming. Kmak says Spanish-speaking community members are visiting the library, and the Library hired a Spanish services coordinator about six months ago. The Library offers Spanish story time and bilingual story time, and in June, it will launch a partnership program with the Mexican consulate to offer educational opportunities to Spanish speakers, from learning to read to getting their GEDs. Kmak says the community does a good job of offering those sorts of classes, but there’s still room for to make those opportunities more accessible.

“Summit County has offered a GED program as well at their library, and that has just been like hot cakes," Kmak says. "So, we figure we should probably supplement something as well.”

For people who want to be able to communicate better with their Spanish-speaking community members, the Library hosts a language-learning program called Mango Languages on their website, which people can access with their library card.

“I believe they have over 75 languages—you can learn how to speak pirate or Spanish, Vietnamese—anything you want," Kmak said. "It's similar to Rosetta Stone. It's the very basics of language, and then you have to practice it, but that's a great first step. Mango Languages—you can find it right on our website at parkcitylibrary.org.”

The Chinese Exclusion Act documentary will be screened at the library on Thursday, May 2 at 7 p.m., and the traveling exhibit will be at the Library May 1-30.

Emily Means hadn’t intended to be a journalist, but after two years of studying chemistry at the University of Utah, she found her fit in the school’s communication program. Diving headfirst into student media opportunities, Means worked as a host, producer and programming director for K-UTE Radio as well as a news writer and copy editor at The Daily Utah Chronicle.