Southwest Regional Library Wins Toby Award for Government Building of the Year

Prestigious prize granted by the Building Owner and Manager's Association of Fort Lauderdale and the Palm Beaches honors Southwest Regional Library's dedication to providing high-quality resources to community.

Broward County Library's Southwest Regional Library, located in Pembroke Pines, Florida, received a coveted TOBY award from the Building Owner and Manager's Association (BOMA) of Fort Lauderdale and the Palm Beaches as the Government Building of the Year.
 
The TOBY awards were granted on the basis of four criteria: Building Appearance and Upkeep, Safety Concerns, Awareness of Environmental Concerns, and Staff Training and Community Outreach. Four judges from BOMA personally visited the library and reviewed supporting material submitted before awarding this prestigious honor.

Southwest Regional Library, opened in 2000, was built with funds set aside from the 1999 Library Bond Issue. The 78,000-square foot Southwest Regional Library is a gathering place that offers thousands of books, DVDs, CDs, and other library materials, public computers, and program and events for the adults, teen and children of this multicultural community located in southwest Broward County.

Southwest Regional Library's structure is bright, airy and scrupulously maintained, providing essential resources for the nearby Pembroke Pines Charter High School and satellite campus locations for Broward Community College and Florida International University. Colorful artworks depicting the flora and fauna of the Everglades create a stunning focal point for the light-filled lobby, which also houses a coffee/snack bar.

Bustling and busy seven days a week, the library is heavily utilized by children, and young adults so numerous safety issue were kept in mind during the library's design and construction to ensure that Southwest Regional's youthful customers can study and be enriched in a comfortable, secure environment. To further educate youngsters, librarians created displays and exhibits throughout the year dealing with Victims Rights/Sexual Assault Awareness and Clean Air Month throughout the year. 

Southwest Regional Library has also offered numerous and varied programs and outreach events that focus on awareness of environmental concerns. At the October 16, 2007 meeting of the library's monthly book club, "Let's Talk About Books," adults enjoyed participating in a book discussion of Barbara Kingsolver's nonfiction narrative, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life, the story of her family's move to a farm in Virginia where they resolved to eat only food either raised on their farm or bought from local sources.

Since the TOBY award criteria included the awareness of environmental concerns, particular attention was focused on the library's devotion to this area. Numerous reading lists, bibliographies, and other informational handouts concentrating on these issues have been distributed to Southwest Regional's customers. Examples include a reading map that offered lists of both fiction and non-fiction books dealing with sustainable living, Appalachian life and the growth and preservation of food; a brochure on eco-thrillers, fast-paced novels that touched on environmental themes such as global warming; and a bibliography on books that readers of Gina Lazenby's The Healthy House would enjoy, such as "healthy living" fiction as well as books to improve the quality of life in the home.

Library staff also created a colorful periodicals display that promoted magazines and journals in Southwest Regional's collection that deal with environmental issues. Titles included Audubon, Mother Jones, Scientific American and Natural History. In observance of Earth Day in April, 2007, a special screening of the award-winning documentary An Inconvenient Truth was held that was open and free to the public.
Southwest Regional also excelled in another area valued by the TOBY judges - Staff Training and Community Outreach. Since the library serves the teaching staff and administration of Pembroke Pines Charter School as well as the students, librarians at Southwest Regional designed and implemented an innovative workshop for the Pembroke Pines Charter School staff called "Databases and Desserts." The workshop provided hands-on demonstrations of online resources such as the Science Resource Center, a database that provides access to full-text information related to science-oriented topics as well as hundreds of images.

Community outreach efforts at Southwest Regional have been numerous and varied. Educational programs include the Signing Stories @ Your Libraries, a program series for families of deaf and hard of hearing children and those who work with deaf children, as well as a display promoting the Broward Autism Foundation.

Cultural outreach events were also held. The Asian/Pacific Heritage Month Celebration program featured Chinese, Bangladeshi and Indian folk dance, Japanese origami, Asian foods, and door prizes and was presented in partnership with the City of Pembroke Pines, the Friends of Southwest Regional Library, the Organization of Chinese Americans and members of the Broward County Asian-American community. A monthly event, "Culture Vultures, Sunday Happenings @ the Library," presents a wide variety of programs including special lecturers, artists, writers, and poets.

Outreach events were also held for students and young adults, and included National Teen Read Week, held in October; the annual November Storybook Festival, with stage performers, storytellers, costumed characters, musicians and more; InPrint!, a four-week series for budding newspapers publishers that covers the basics of layout, writing and design; and TeamUp, a pilot mentoring project that paired teen volunteers with third-graders in an effort to boost reading skills and interest.

By proving its success in all four categories of the TOBY Award judging criteria, Southwest Regional Library was able to win this prestigious award as the Government Building of the Year. With its strong commitment to the highest quality of service for its customers and community, Broward County Libraries has once again offered a new level of excellence.