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PROGRAMS AND EVENTS:
RESOURCES, PUBLICATIONS AND NEWS:
Reminder of Topics in the Previous Digest
MLA LGBTQ+ Interest Group First Ever Regional Meetup
Saturday, March 23, 2-4 p.m.
Meet us at Red Emma's in Baltimore from 2-4 p.m. This is a purely social occasion! Significant others are welcome to join in the fun! Take some time out of your day to come and connect.
PLEASE RSVP HERE!
If you work or live outside of the Central Region: Anne Arundel, Baltimore County, Baltimore City, Carroll, Frederick, Harford, Howard, Montgomery, PG counties, you are also welcome to join, but don't feel pressured. We are holding meetups quarterly. Next up - Eastern Region!
Share with a friend! You don't have to be an MLA member to participate.
See you soon!
Participate in Online Strategic Planning Workshop
Thursday, March 28, 2-3 p.m. (CST)
This message is for all public library workers (e.g., staff, paraprofessionals and professionals, friends of the library, volunteers, etc.) working in the American South (Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, West Virginia and the District of Columbia).
We are Dr. Bharat Mehra, EBSCO Endowed Chair in Social Justice and Professor in the School of Library and Information Studies at the University of Alabama, and Dr. Kimberly Black, Associate Professor in the Department of Computing, Information and Mathematical Sciences and Technologies at Chicago State University.
We invite you to participate in an online Strategic Planning Workshop (via Zoom) on the topic of Health scheduled on March 28, 2024 (2-3 p.m. CST) as part of a grant project, “Civic Engagement for Racial Justice in Public Libraries (RJ@PL)” funded by the Institute of Museum and Library Services, National Leadership Grants for Libraries (NLG-L)– FY 2022 Guidelines (Implementation – Project Type), from August 2022 – July 2025, awarded to the University of Alabama and Chicago State University [PI: B. Mehra. Co-PI: K. Black]. [LG-252354-OLS- 22].
RJ@PL seeks to explore the role of public libraries in their support and promotion of racial justice and positive social change in communities. The purpose is to document the perspectives and experiences of public library staff about their information offerings, activities and initiatives to address issues related to racism and racial justice in their communities. Data collected from this research will help develop contextually relevant strategic information tools (e.g., roadmap, strategic action plan) that public libraries can use to overcome problems related to racism in their communities.
The goal of each workshop is to revise and finalize the roadmap and strategic action plan for the attainment of racial justice in communities through public library civic engagement in a specific domain or sphere of community life.
If you are willing to participate in the RJ@PL Strategic Planning Workshop on Health, please follow the steps listed below:
Step 1: Sign-up for participating in our RJ@PL Strategic Planning Workshop via Google Docs at URL:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1_Sz9WsuC0Uyki10OQbk8OkTysn91S57WqSMssO6MkQY/edit
Step 2: Once you have signed-up, you will receive an email with a link to the draft document of our RJ@PL Roadmap and Strategic Action Plan (for Health) with instructions on how to leave feedback asynchronously. You will also receive the Zoom link to attend the live event on March 28, 2024.
Step 3: You will have time to review the rough draft of the RJ@PL Roadmap and Strategic Action Plan (for Health). Please provide your feedback on this rough draft by the end of the month. Further instructions are provided on the document draft.
Step 4: Please attend the one-hour online workshop to discuss the RJ@PL Roadmap and Strategic Action Plan (for Health) on March 28, 2024.
If you are unable to attend the meeting (Step 4), you can still provide feedback on the RJ@PL Roadmap and Strategic Action Plan by the end of the month.
BACKGROUND
In the first phase of the RJ@PL project (August 2022 - July 2023), we conducted online surveys of public library staff asking them about the potential for civic engagement for racial justice by public libraries in the American South; we also asked them for examples of activities that they conducted to promote racial justice in their communities. We used the data collected in the first phase to create a very rough draft of a roadmap for public library civic engagement for racial justice and a strategic action plan (i.e., goals, objectives, activities) for the domain of Health. The RJ@PL Roadmap and Strategic Action Plan (for Health) contain the following sections:
(a) summary of the survey responses to each question (i.e., roadmap)
(b) initial draft of the strategic action plan (i.e., goals, objectives, activities)
(c) quotes (data from open-ended survey questions that illustrate the draft of the goals/objectives of the Strategic Action Plan for the Health domain).
The rough draft of the RJ@PL Roadmap and Strategic Action Plan is a work in progress. Please review the document and provide your ideas for editing, modifying and adding to it by inserting comments in the draft. There are more instructions in the document itself.
At the workshop meeting on March 28, we will discuss the roadmap and the strategic action plan. By the end of the meeting, we hope to have a set of amended and revised goals, objectives and possible activities that can be done to promote racial justice in communities through public library civic engagement. The workshop will be open to public library staff throughout the Southern U.S. After the workshop, you will have a final opportunity to revise the drafted and revised roadmap and strategic action plan. The Google document will be open for modifications until the end of the month.
FUTURE WORK
We will follow this process for each of the twelve domains of community life. By the first Thursday of every month, we will advertise the opportunity to participate and share feedback (asynchronous and synchronous) on the rough draft of the roadmap and strategic action plan for that month’s domain. A tentative schedule of the meetings and the domains appears below:
Tentative Schedule [last Thursday of the month, all meetings will be 2-3 p.m. CST]
1. August 31, 2023: Economy
2. September 28, 2023: Education
3. October 26, 2023: Farming/Agriculture
4. November 30, 2023: Entertainment and Sports
5. January 25, 2024: Environment
6. February 29, 2024: Government, Politics, and Public Policy
7. March 28, 2024: Health
8. April 25, 2024: Information Technology
9. May 30, 2024: Law and Justice
10. June 27, 2024: Manufacturing/Retail
11. July 25, 2024: Youth Families
12. August 29, 2024: RJ@PL Internal Workplace
We are ever thankful for your time and expertise devoted to improving our communities. Please feel free to invite your public library colleagues to provide asynchronous and synchronous contributions to the RJ@PL Roadmap and Strategic Action Plan for Health for them to sign up here:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1_Sz9WsuC0Uyki10OQbk8OkTysn91S57WqSMssO6MkQY/edit
For more information about the RJ@PL project, please visit our website http://civicengagement4racialjustice.ua.edu/. If you have any questions or concerns, please reach out to us - Drs. Mehra and Black, at bmehra@ua.edu and kblack21@csu.edu!
WebJunction Content and Upcoming Webinar
Tuesday, April 30, 2024, 3 p.m.
Hopkinton Public Library unites community in library planning: There are thousands of public libraries in the United States, all different sizes with unique communities. Though larger libraries may often benefit from higher staff counts and bigger budgets, size isn’t everything. This is definitely the case for the 2,000-square-foot Hopkinton Public Library in Iowa. A team of just two enthusiastically support 338 library card holders across Hopkinton and the county. They offer an impressive, weekly slate of engaging programs. And people love them. In fact, some event attendance numbers have eclipsed the total cardholder count, even when there’s a cost. So, what’s the secret sauce? Including the community from beginning to end. From an annual haunted house to community bake-offs, the library incorporates locals for ideation and program planning, so they feel invested and want to participate.
Monthly list of free webinars for library staff: As you may be aware, the team at the Maine State Library is now managing the national free calendar for library staff learning. Thank you to the Wyoming State Library for compiling this valuable resource for over 17 years, and much appreciation to the Maine State Library for your commitment to continue this important work. WebJunction publishes the list to WebJunction.org each month, on two pages—one listing the offerings by topic. These links remain the same month to month:
And if you have submissions for the list, or questions for the MSL team:
Advancing IDEAs: Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, Accessibility, March 5, 2024: This is the latest Hanging Together blog post, part of a regular series on issues of Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Accessibility, compiled by a team of OCLC contributors.
WebJunction Webinars
This upcoming webinar is open for registration. If you can’t attend a live session, all WebJunction webinars are recorded and available for free in the Course Catalog.
Leadership strategies for building connection and diffusing difficult situations
Tuesday, April 30, 2024 ◆ 3:00 pm Eastern / 12:00 pm Pacific ◆ 60 minutes
Registration: https://www.webjunction.org/events/webjunction/leadership-strategies.html
As library staff, our collective morale and goodwill are often eroded by a tidal wave of factors including book challenges, budget constraints, staffing shortages, toxic online discourse, and an increasingly divided culture. In times like these, searching for common ground might sound naïve or idealistic, but intentionally cultivating these mindsets can have a profound effect on your organizational culture, communication, problem-solving, and mental health. This webinar introduces skills grounded in the “Good Inside” approach, and will cover practical strategies to develop empathetic, curiosity-led leadership that assumes good intent in moments of conflict and stress, along with actionable communication skills for connection and cooperation.
ALA Releases Latest Censorship Survey Results
Our latest numbers on censorship in 2023 are here, and here's what we found:
The number of titles targeted for censorship surged 65 percent in 2023, reaching the highest levels ever documented by ALA. The new numbers released today show efforts to censor 4,240 unique book titles in schools and libraries.
If you haven't yet, join the Unite Against Book Bans campaign and then share with your community to bring more people into the freedom to read movement! And watch for additional actions on this topic during on Right to Read Day, April 8th!
ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom documented 1,247 demands to censor library books, materials, and resources in 2023. Four key trends emerged from the data gathered from 2023 censorship reports:
· Pressure groups in 2023 focused on public libraries in addition to targeting school libraries. The number of titles targeted for censorship at public libraries increased by 92 percent over the previous year; school libraries saw an 11 percent increase.
· Groups and individuals demanding the censorship of multiple titles, often dozens or hundreds at a time, drove this surge.
· Titles representing the voices and lived experiences of LGBTQIA+ and BIPOC individuals made up 47 percent of those targeted in censorship attempts.
· There were attempts to censor more than 100 titles in each of these 17 states: Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Idaho, Illinois, Iowa, Kentucky, Maryland, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, and Wisconsin.
ALA will unveil its highly anticipated list of the top 10 most challenged books in the U.S. on Monday, April 8, which is Right to Read Day of National Library Week, along with its full State of America's Libraries Report.
"Every challenge to a library book is an attack on our freedom to read. The books being targeted again focus on LGBTQ+ and people of color. Our communities and our country are stronger because of diversity. Libraries that reflect their communities' diversity promote learning and empathy that some people want to hide or eliminate,” said ALA President Emily Drabinski.
For a breakdown of censorship challenges by state, visit this heat map.
Thank you for all you do for libraries!
ALA Public Policy & Advocacy Team
Invitation to Participate in Research Study on Social Work in Libraries
As researchers at Syracuse University, we are exploring the critical role or lack thereof of social workers in public libraries. This study is two-fold: 1) an anonymous survey 2) an optional 30-minute interview via Zoom. You do not have to agree to participate in the interview in order to complete the survey.
Your participation is voluntary, and you have the right to withdraw and discontinue participation at any time. Your answers will remain anonymous, and the data will be reported in the aggregate. This research has been reviewed by the Institutional Review Board at the Syracuse University (IRB#23-381) and has been found exempt. The link for the survey can be found at: https://syracuseuniversity.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_8ekHHwAldtuxrwO
The survey will be open from February 20, 2024, to March 20, 2024. If you have any questions, please contact the Principal Investigator, Dr. Renate Chancellor, rlchance@syr.edu or Shannon Crooks, co-Principal Investigator at scrooks@syr.edu.
Thank you again for considering this research opportunity.
Renate Chancellor, Ph.D.
Shannon Crooks, Doctoral student
- Maryland State Archives' March Lunch & Learn - March 14
- Join the Virtual Reference Services Reference Roundup! - March 20
- Intellectual Freedom in Academic Libraries and Beyond - April 17
- Maryland Humanities' Maryland History Day - Recruiting Judges - May 4
- Enoch Pratt Free Library & State Library Resource Center 2024 Spring Conference - May 28 & 29
- Call for Posters for MLA/DLA Annual Conference 2024 - Deadline March 22
- Maryland Library Association's (MLA) March Issue of The Happenings is Now Available
- New Blog + Newsletter: AI in Education and Libraries
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