Video - Opening Remarks

Dr. Paul LeClerc
President, New York Public Library

MR. LECLERC: I am Paul LeClerc, the president of the New York Public Library, on behalf of Catie Marron, the chairman of our Board of Trustees, who is here this morning. And indeed, on behalf of all of our trustees and our 3,000 staff members, I am delighted to welcome you to the Celeste Bartos Forum and to our library for this truly important and very, very timely White House Conference on Global Literacy.

That Mrs. Bush elected to host this important meeting at the New York Public Library is, of course, no accident. As a librarian, as the only librarian ever to be our nation's first lady, and as a teacher, Mrs. Bush appreciates more than most the centrally important role that libraries play and should be encouraged to play in helping the world's citizens achieve the highest levels of literacy possible.

None of us this morning needs to be convinced that literacy has always, for almost all of human history, been the single greatest gift that a society can give to its citizens. Literacy is the key to personal growth, to economic and educational enfranchisement, and to the development of human capital. The fact that so many spouses, and so many ambassadors and distinguished friends have come together at the New York Public Library this morning for this conference on global literacy is a cause, I think, for very, very great optimism.

Illiteracy is a global phenomenon. It touches people in virtually all countries, regardless of the wealth or level of development of that country.

When I had the honor of first greeting Mrs. Bush here at the library three years ago, I told her that ours is the other great library in America. There happens to be a rather large federal library in Washington, D.C.

And sitting in this room this morning, even though you cannot see them, we are surrounded here by 100 miles of bookshelves containing the written records of humanity and human accomplishment over a span of 5,000 years beginning with clay tablets from ancient Samaria. This is one of the largest library collections in the world. We are also surrounded by hundreds of computers, by wireless environments, and by exceptionally rich digital resources.

To benefit from this library, or indeed to benefit from any library anywhere in the world, there is one thing that you have to be able to do, and that is to read. And unfortunately, not enough members of the citizenry of the world can do so today.

I suspect that the influence that you have in your home countries is very, very great indeed. And I sincerely hope that you will dedicate a large portion of that influence to advocating programs that will meet the literacy needs of the

children, the women, and the men of all of our countries.

I would now like to call your attention to the large screens on either side of the stage here where some wonderful photographs of the programs that are featured in today's conference will be illustrated. Thank you very, very much.

(Applause.)