“She shows up each day for families and co-workers, ready to bring to reality the best promises of excellent library services.”

Adilene Estrada-Huerta’s creativity, expertise, and dedication have transformed Sacramento Public Library’s service to Spanish speaking families.

Adilene’s accomplishments include developing an innovative model for bilingual programming, which empowers librarians to offer storytimes in languages they themselves don’t speak. In the model, librarians partner with a staff member who knows the target language to read a story aloud together. Adilene has trained countless colleagues in this programming format, enabling library staff to offer high-quality storytimes in Spanish as well as Russian.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Adilene has drawn on her extensive technological skills to adapt library programming to a virtual format. Online storytimes feature engaging graphics, animations, and lyric slides, as well as closed captioning whenever possible to make the videos accessible to all.