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Photo by Reed Hutchinson UCLA
Photographic Services
Natalie Cole heads the California Center for the Book and
promotes literacy and reading by working with school and community
libraries.
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the california center for the book
Cole aims to change lives through reading
BY WENDY SODERBURG
UCLA Today Staff
Don’t let Natalie Cole’s soft-spoken demeanor and
charming British accent fool you — the woman is a full-fledged
activist.
An activist for reading, that is.
Cole is director of the California Center for the Book, housed
in the Department of Information Studies, Graduate School of Education
& Information Studies. The center is part of the nationwide
Center for the Book network — created by the Library of Congress
— that develops programming and resources for libraries and
schools.
“There is a center in each state, and they’re quite
different from each other, but we all promote the same thing: books
and reading,” Cole said.
The California center, which has been located at UCLA since January
2000, provides a full range of outreach programs for both children
and adults in school and public libraries throughout the state.
In one of the most popular programs, libraries are given all the
materials they need to host a book discussion, including books,
discussion questions and promotional materials; when the libraries
are done, they simply mail the books back.
Two other programs, Letters About Literature (for grades 4-12)
and Writer to Writer (for adult learners), invite participants to
write a letter to an author who has inspired them to look differently
at the world. Winners are chosen from among the letter writers to
receive a cash prize and a free trip to the “Books Change
Lives” awards ceremony in Sacramento.
“It’s a wonderful contest,” Cole said proudly.
“The letters really do reaffirm the value and the importance
and the joy of reading.”
Working closely with people and developing partnerships is a favorite
part of the job for Cole, who meets each day with librarians, literacy
providers and funders such as the California State Library. “That’s
our main source of support, although we do appeal for donations
and apply for grants from other agencies,” Cole said. “And
obviously, we get a lot of support from UCLA.”
Cole has always seemed destined to work with books. Born and raised
in Cheltenham, England, she was 16 when she got her first job shelving
books in the Gloucestershire County Council public library.
She received her master’s (1994) and Ph.D. (1998) degrees
in librarianship from the University of Sheffield, where she met
her husband, Jonathan Furner, a fellow library studies student.
They moved to California in 1998 when Furner got a job as an assistant
professor in UCLA’s Department of Information Studies. Cole
became acting director of the California Center for the Book in
1999 and director in 2002.
The two live in Park La Brea, “which is in a great walking
neighborhood, with so many cafés and shops,” Cole said.
“And we can see the Hollywood sign from our place, which we
thought was very cool when we got here. Our visitors always like
that.”
To learn more, see www.calbook.org/.
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