It has been my great pleasure to work with the remarkable librarians that we have in Pennsylvania over the past 14 years and heartwarming to visit wonderful libraries with staff that care deeply about their communities.

I also want to thank my colleagues from the Office of Commonwealth Libraries who have been kind and generous with their time, who have helped each other out when all seemed like chaos, who could laugh over the silly things that happen and then pull it together when it was needed to organize a project, workshop or a meeting.

My work with Outreach Programming has been satisfying and rewarding, professionally and personally.  I want to give special thanks to Clare M. Zales, past State Librarian, who was always gracious and treated all employees with respect, Betty Ann Funk who allowed me to be decisive in working with multicultural programming across the state, and BJ Urling who was always there to hear me when I needed someone to listen.   It was gratifying to be able to work with many other state agencies on the behalf of services to Older Adults, to work with 25 public libraries on the creation of their “Senior Spaces”, and to begin the process of holding Poverty Simulations in different regions of the state for library staff.  I hope that these simulations can continue in the years to come.

I wish your libraries all the best for the future.

Claudia