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





A robot displays aspects of computational thinking. Photo: Jamie Santoro

Focusing on Teen Needs

November 7, 2018

Three key takeaways from the symposium: Students need computational thinking (CT) to succeed. YALSA 2018 Symposium attendees had an opportunity to experience CT in action in “It’s True: Computational Thinking and Libraries Are a Perfect Match,” an interactive session led by Marijke Visser, associate director and senior policy advocate for the American Library Association’s Public … Continue reading Focusing on Teen Needs


Dr. Dave demonstrates Bernoulli’s principle with a leaf blower and toilet paper at Ohio State University’s Whiz Bang Science Café at Worthington Libraries. Photo: Worthington (Ohio) Libraries

Excited about Science

November 1, 2018

The library furnished students with kits that they used to gather soil samples around campus, which were then returned to NCSU’s biotechnology lab for extracting DNA to locate the “gold-pooping gene,” as Lewis calls it. They then took the samples with the most Delftia and sequenced a portion of the gold genes at the Genomic Sciences Laboratory. With … Continue reading Excited about Science


From left, Milton Bluehouse Jr., Cassandra Allen, and Corey Garza present “Environmental Justice @ Your Library and in Your Community,” a September 29 session at the third National Conference of Librarians of Color in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

The Path to Environmental Justice

September 30, 2018

“We are all familiar with what happened in Flint,” said Cassandra Allen, outreach librarian at the National Library of Medicine. So what part can libraries, universities, and other organizations play in making sure people of all races, cultures, and income levels are treated fairly when it comes to environmental development, implementation, and policy? At “Environmental Justice … Continue reading The Path to Environmental Justice