Grade school students stand around a table with a science project on it as a grad student talks about it.

Shaking Up Science

June 3, 2024

The event was RPL’s second Flip the Fair, introduced in 2022 to help graduate students develop skills to effectively communicate their research while engaging local elementary students with STEM topics and the library. It’s an example of how libraries are seeking innovative ways to share science and research with new audiences. “We wanted to give … Continue reading Shaking Up Science


Vivienne Byrd, librarian and lead of the Full STEAM Ahead & Citizen Science Initiative at Los Angeles Public Library, speaks during the "Cloud Watching for NASA" session at the 2023 American Library Association Annual Conference June 26.

Watching Clouds for NASA

June 27, 2023

At the “Cloud Watching for NASA” session at the American Library Association’s 2023 Annual Conference and Exhibition in Chicago, Jessica Taylor, atmospheric scientist at the NASA Langley Research Center demonstrated GLOBE Observer, a citizen science mobile app created by NASA’s Global Learning and Observations to Benefit the Environment (GLOBE) Program. She was one of three … Continue reading Watching Clouds for NASA


Anne Holland demonstrates an eclipse-related activity by using a flashlight and a toy tree to cast a shadow.

Preparing for the Next Great American Eclipse

June 25, 2023

Librarians hoping to avoid last-minute scrambling to prepare for the upcoming annular (on October 14, 2023) and total solar (on April 8, 2024) eclipses visible in the continental United States attended the session “A Procrastinator’s Guide to the 2023/2024 Solar Eclipses” at the American Library Association’s 2023 Annual Conference and Exhibition in Chicago on June … Continue reading Preparing for the Next Great American Eclipse



Sarah Evans, Lacy Molina, and Lance Simpson

Reconnecting over the Airwaves

January 24, 2022

In “Raise Up Radio: Connecting Families, Libraries, and Radio for Educational Equity,” a January 23 session at the American Library Association’s LibLearnX virtual conference, Evans and Simpson, along with Lacy Molina, a UNT student and project assistant, shared details about the early stages of the Raise Up Radio project. The initiative aims to address some … Continue reading Reconnecting over the Airwaves


Sheva Moore at Mary W. Jackson NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C.Photo: Aubrey Gemignani/NASA

Bookend: Over the Moon

September 1, 2021

A video librarian and researcher at Mary W. Jackson NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C., Moore provides materials from the onsite video, photo, and audio collection to production companies, TV networks, advertisers, and private citizens with an interest in space and NASA. She also helps produce NASA’s social media content, segments for NASA TV, and science … Continue reading Bookend: Over the Moon


Gracey Gordon, Liz M. McChesney, Vicky Perez, Aldo Vasquez

Priming the STEM Pipeline

June 25, 2021

The STEM career pipeline is “leaky,” often leaving behind students of color and those in poverty. For this reason, the Urban Libraries Council—with funding from IMLS—launched Partners for Middle School STEM in 2018. This grant funded programs at 11 libraries to develop models for building strong STEM community partnerships for middle school children. Durham County … Continue reading Priming the STEM Pipeline


Fourth graders at Greensview Elementary in Upper Arlington, Ohio, battle their custom Sphero robots.

Robots: Activate

March 2, 2020

“As soon as you popped a balloon, it got everyone’s attention,” Jill Merkle, library media specialist at Greensview Elementary in Upper Arlington, Ohio, says. “It was fun to see the students rally and root for one another.” Merkle and Kristen Pavlasek, who now teaches 3rd grade at Greensview Elementary, teamed up in 2018 to create … Continue reading Robots: Activate


Paul Jones

Newsmaker: Paul Jones

July 16, 2019

Paul Jones, professor at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s (UNC) School of Information and Library Science, is one of a few who worked on the Lunar Library, a 30-million-page archive in the size and shape of a DVD. The archive—which includes the English-language Wikipedia among nearly 200 gigabytes of content with 1.5 billion … Continue reading Newsmaker: Paul Jones