For some libraries serving vulnerable populations, food-producing gardens and nutrition initiatives are born out of necessity. Others have launched programs to advance the causes of sustainability and education. When David Mixdorf was named director of the South Sioux City (Neb.) Public Library in 2009, he was well positioned to establish the library’s first community garden. … Continue reading Library to Farm to Table
“Anytime I experience something cool in my real life, I think, ‘How could I bring this to the library?’” says Karissa Alcox, escape room aficionado and youth librarian at Fort Erie (Ont.) Public Library. “It takes place indoors, and you don’t need much aside from some locks and props—a library can afford to do it.” … Continue reading Libraries on Lockdown
“We were the first library to explore this really structured form for readers’ advisory,” says Special Projects Director Barry Trott of the “Looking for a Good Book?” program that launched in 2003 and now receives up to 10–15 requests per month. “It makes us feel like [Netflix is] on the right track,” he laughs. The … Continue reading Recommended Reading
18 Number of terra-cotta figures—academic heroes such as Plato, Benjamin Franklin, and Galileo—guarding the façade of the Suzzallo Library at the University of Washington in Seattle. 123,000 Square footage of the McAllen (Tex.) Public Library, built in a former Walmart store and the largest single-floor library in the US. 1895 Year that Boston Public Library … Continue reading By the Numbers: Library Architecture and Design
Preparing for a job interview can be nerve-racking. Looking your best often translates into feeling your best. But if you live in southwest Philadelphia, one of the city’s most economically depressed neighborhoods, where the poverty rate is a staggering 36% and unemployment is more than 16%—compared with national averages of 14.5% and 5%, respectively—then your … Continue reading Community Ties
Colleen Hall, Lexington Public’s youth services manager, hopes that having beacons placed in the city’s retail establishments will get the whole town reading. “We’ve been targeting the middle schools because that’s the target audience of the book,” says Hall, of outreach efforts. “But I think we’re going to get a lot of people who aren’t … Continue reading How to Get Teens in the Library this Summer
103 Number of librarians who attended the “Convention of Librarians” during the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia in 1876—what is considered the birth of the ALA. Of these founders, 90 were men and 13 were women. 60,301 Number of active ALA members, as of March 2016. Today, women account for about 85% of all librarians in … Continue reading By the Numbers: ALA’s 140th Anniversary
“In the library sector, we always want to make sure that we are addressing the needs and interests of those who we serve in our communities, and in most of our communities, the older adult population has increased,” says Fatima Perkins, director of community outreach and advocacy at the Western Reserve Area Agency on Aging … Continue reading An Aging Population Reshapes Library Services
But with prices skyrocketing—the cost of textbooks has increased 73% since 2006, according to a 2016 report by the Student Public Interest Research Groups—some libraries and networks are using creative incentives to get OERs into the classroom. Texas A&M University Libraries, in partnership with the school’s student government, has established what it believes to be the … Continue reading Pushing for Open Textbooks
“It’s a very depressed area economically,” Gromalski says of Mahanoy City. “The coal region, which is made up of small towns, used to be booming. Now the mining industry has been gone for several decades, older people are getting older [and] younger people are moving away because there are no jobs.” To re-create pride in … Continue reading Community Reporting
The statistics are disturbing: San Diego is one of the 13 highest child sex trafficking areas in the nation, according to the FBI. And the city’s sex trafficking industry—estimated at $810 million—is the second largest underground economy after the drug trade. But San Diego Public Library (SDPL) Director Misty Jones and her staff want to … Continue reading Out of the Shadows
But in one sense, it’s already happening. In December 2015, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a nonprofit digital technology rights group, filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission against Google for Education, alleging that the company is surreptitiously collecting data about students as they use their school-owned Chromebooks and education apps—data that they’re using … Continue reading Champions of Children’s Privacy
