Welch has nearly 25 years of nonprofit management experience and started her career in environmental education and community engagement after receiving a master’s degree in biology. Before joining ALA, Melanie founded the Great Lakes Conservation department at Chicago’s Shedd Aquarium and was a 2010 Catto fellow at the Aspen Institute in Washington, D.C. She answered … Continue reading 11 Questions: Melanie Welch
The American Library Association (ALA) announced today that its Libraries Transforming Communities project will offer more than $7 million in grants to small and rural libraries to increase the accessibility of facilities, services, and programs to better serve people with disabilities. “[The] Libraries Transforming Communities: Accessible Small and Rural Communities [grant] represents an important next … Continue reading ALA Announces $7 Million in Grants to Support Accessibility
Prior to ALA, Fournier worked in neighborhood development, as program director at the nonprofit Near South Planning Board in Chicago. There she directed the Printers Row Lit Fest, the largest free outdoor literary showcase in the Midwest, and the Authors in the Schools literacy program. She also worked in higher education as programming associate at … Continue reading 11 Questions: Mary Davis Fournier
The American Library Association (ALA) announced today the appointment of Mary Davis Fournier as executive director, Public Library Association (PLA), a division of ALA. Her first day in her new role will be Monday, June 14. Fournier is a 20-year veteran of ALA, having served in various roles including most recently deputy director of the Public … Continue reading Mary Davis Fournier Named PLA Executive Director
Libraries have a role to play too. From hosting programs with local legislators and teaching patrons media literacy to offering support for online census questions and assistance with government e-forms, today’s libraries are hot spots of civic engagement. Newcomers to this country, especially, see libraries as trustworthy guides on their path to integrating into their … Continue reading Welcoming New Americans
“Eclipse fever has clutched Salem,” says Ann Scheppke, adult services librarian at Salem (Oreg.) Public Library (SPL). Residents of Salem, a city that sits in the path of totality—the geographical strip experiencing darkness caused by the moon casting its shadow on the Earth—and the 100,000 out-of-towners expected to visit will be among the first in … Continue reading Total Eclipse of the Library
Over the course of a year and a half, the Library Takeover project—inspired by a similar teen program founded by Apples & Snakes and Half-Moon Theatre in the UK—went from grant proposal to three fully realized, polished library programs that were informed by community input at each step in the process. Engaging community need Analysis … Continue reading Madison’s Library Takeover
Today American Library Association (ALA) President Julie B. Todaro released the following statement in support of the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Endowment for the Arts. “Since 1992 ALA’s Public Programs Office (PPO) has administered dozens of NEH grants, enabling libraries to initiate conversation and healthy debate and enabling them to fulfill … Continue reading ALA Affirms Support for NEH, NEA
It was not until 1623 that one of the most significant publications of all time, Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies, known to us as the First Folio, first suggested to the world that the Sweet Swan of Avon memorialized by the “Stratford moniment” (as poet Leonard Digges called it) in the town’s Holy … Continue reading Shakespeare’s “Infinite Book of Secrecy”
