On October 29, 2002, Boundary County Library director Sandy Ashworth and library board members Jim Marx and Larry Hosterman traveled to Washington, D.C., where First Lady Laura Bush presented them the most singular honor in the library's history, the 2002 Museum and Library Services National Award.

They were the only recipients at the ceremony who traveled from west of ... not the Mississippi ... the Ohio River.

The Institute of Museum and Library Services National Awards were created to underscore the powerful role of museums and libraries as leaders in our democratic society. They're a tribute to exceptional service in reaching out to children, families and communities in towns across the nation, and through innovation and imagination addressing the urgent and ever-changing needs of the communities they serve.

Along with the diminutive Boundary County Library, other 2002 winners were the Wildlife Conservation Society/Bronx Zoo, New York, the Hartford Public Library, Hartford, Connecticut, the Please Touch Museum, Philadelphia, the Southern Alleghenies Museum of Art, Loretto, Pennsylvania, and the Southwest Georgia Regional Public Library System, Bainbridge, Georgia.

"I am pleased to present the National Awards for Museum and Library Services," Laura said. "This year's recipients are making a difference. They are strengthening ties between neighbors and enriching family and community life. I congratulate each of them for their dedication and enthusiasm."

Alone among the rest of this year's winners, the Boundary County Library weaves its magic on a budget that comes in below $1 million ... well below. Its $224,230 annual budget is dwarfed by the funding other winners have to work with. Yet like even the most renowned libraries in the most bustling metropolis, the four full time and six part time staff members at the Boundary County Library dream big, and thanks to its many partners and an unparalleled community spirit, they make those dreams reality.

Boundary County has an official population of 9,871 residents. Yet in fiscal year 2000-2001, the Boundary County Library logged an astonishing 73,990 visits. And in a county where only 74-percent of the population has completed high school, where the average high school dropout rate is 16.2-percent, and where one third of fourth graders can't read at grade level, the Boundary County Library, in partnership with numerous organizations, is making incredible strides in turning these abject statistics around.

The library runs a model family literacy program that promotes early childhood learning, parent education and greater public awareness of the needs of the very young. Its literacy campaign includes English as a second language, Head Start and Migrant Head Start; the comprehensive nature of the library's partnership to provide literary services caught the attention of the Idaho Department of Education, which helped expand the library's program for the rapidly expanding migrant population in exchange for the library's paradigm for their literacy programs. Now, adult basic education classes for migrant families are available in Idaho soon after they arrive ... not just before they plan to leave.

In addition, the Boundary County Library recently took the lead role in a community campaign to provide an easily accessible, centralized network of social and educational resources for Boundary County residents. The Boundary County Community Resource Center is well its way to construction, with grants and pledges already exceeding $70,000. Once complete, the center will provide a wide range of services, from GED study and testing to workforce training, a distance learning lab to a pediatric care clinic.

The library is also a playing a key role in the historic partnership recently formed between the governments of the cities of Moyie Springs and Bonners Ferry, Boundary County and the Kootenai Tribe of Idaho, all working together to celebrate the culture of the community while paving the way for a brighter, more prosperous future.