This is Northwest Public Broadcastings Weekly News Now.

And today it is time for a new community spotlight.

And we are here in Yakima because there is a special celebration here.

We are at the Yakima Valley Libraries with Candelaria Mendoza because the libraries are celebrating 80 years.

Candelaria, thank you so much for joining us.

Thank you for having me.

I'm excited.

Okay.

80 years.

What are the most impactful moments of the library after 80 years of service?

Yeah, I mean, a lot of it is based on the community.

The libraries were built on community need and demand, and we've been able to open more locations after we were established.

And now we have libraries across the library system.

We have 16 soon to be 17 with the Union Gap library opening pretty soon.

Well, something really special about this celebration is the time capsule.

So can you tell me about that?

Yeah, it's been kind of a library tradition to do that and kind of pull together little elements of the time and put them in a time capsule.

We did one back in 1958, and it was put behind a granite wall that had things like financial statements and minutes.

and we wanted to kind of bring that back to the community.

So we're doing one this year, and we're already asking the community to bring their little nuggets of pictures, business cards, brochures, pamphlets to kind of build that time capsule.

And then again, we'll capture them.

We're going to do one for each of our locations, and hopefully we'll open them in like 20 years or so.

It'll be exciting to share, you know, what was in right now, 20 years from now.

Okay.

Candelaria, well, one important thing of the library is we find different things at the libraries, not only in Yakima Valley, in every place.

Libraries are not only books.

So what kind of services can families and the community find here?

Yeah, we have a lot of services.

So one thing that if you do want to stick to databases, we have a lot of, elements of learning how to a new language with Mango Languages, a lot of databases that people really do want to do some research, but we also have programs, we do community events, storytimes, where we just invite the community and to do some storytelling with the staff.

We just want to be a community hub for the community to come in and hang out and be safe and feel welcome.

Okay.

Thank you so much, Candelaria, for telling us about the library.

We invite everybody to bring their pictures and everything they want to put into this time capsule, and also for our audience, don't forget to follow us, on Facebook and Instagram.

I'm Johanna Bejaranno with the Northwest Public Broadcasting Weekly News Now.