It’s Citizen Science Month AND (Almost) National Library Week!

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Two people sit on a couch looking at a laptop together. The text reads: Citizen Science Month and Participate from Home!It’s Citizen Science Month AND it’s (almost) National Library Week! SciStarter and the School for the Future of Innovation in Society at Arizona State University, and ASU Library—with support from the National Library of Medicine—will shine a light on libraries’ citizen science-related resources during a live event on April 21 at 5pm ET…and we invite YOU to 1) send us resources you’d like us to highlight, 2) join us during the event, and 3) invite your library audiences to tune in, too!

LIVE: The Field Guide to Citizen Science–and other free resources from your library!

Text reads: The Field Guide to Citizen Science

The live, online event will feature library resources, including: The Field Guide to Citizen Science, a new book from the experts at SciStarter. The event will include a reading by Darlene Cavalier, founder of SciStarter, Professor of Practice at ASU, and one of the authors, who will help audiences discover what citizen science is, who can be a citizen scientist (everyone!), and how to find and join a project from home. We’ll all do one project together.

The Field Guide to Citizen Science reading and related activities will serve as a pathway to help people (families, seniors, teens, adults—everyone!) connect with other books and resources they can access for free, online through YOUR libraries. Then, Tess Wilson from the National Network of Libraries of Medicine will join us to spotlight projects on SciStarter.org/NLM, related health and medicine resources, and more.  

Please register for this free event and spread the word using any of the resources in this Google Folder! The event will be hosted on Zoom, live-streamed to YouTube, and shared on Facebook. 

We want to hear from you!

  • Does your library offer citizen science resources you’d like us to promote during the live event? Great! Please send us links and the name/city/state of your library.
  • Would you like to be listed as a partner of this event? Please send us your logo and website. Partners commit to attend and promote the event.
  • We will run live polls and invite you to send us questions you’d like us to ask the audience (“Have you engaged in a citizen science project?”  “Have you used your library’s online resources during social distancing?”)

If you have access to your library’s Facebook page, please share the event invitation and post the link to the YouTube video where the event will be streamed. We’ll post that link at the opening of the Zoom event. This way, your library’s Facebook community can tune in without going through Zoom.

Please send materials and comments to CarolineN@SciStarter.org . Better yet, call into the Citizen Science Month call tomorrow (Thursday) at 8 am and 11 am ET: Join Zoom Meeting https://zoom.us/j/264491167
Meeting ID: 264 491 167.  One tap mobile +16465588656,,264491167#

Happy Citizen Science Month!

Celebrate Creativity during National Library Week

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(Image courtesy of American Library Association)

This week (April 8th-14th) is National Library Week. Celebrating its 60th anniversary since its inaugural year in 1958 with the theme “Libraries Lead!”, libraries across the nation will be observing the week with activities, programs, and more. This week also celebrates National Library Workers Day (April 10), National Bookmobile Day (April 11), and Take Action for Libraries Day (April 12).

To lead the celebrations is Misty Copeland, author and American Ballet Theatre Principal Dancer, who serves as the 2018 National Library Week Honorary Chair. As described on the American Library Association page about National Library Week, Misty Copeland, an advocate for “youth to pursue their dreams regardless of what challenges they may encounter”, invites everyone to “discover your passions and achieve your goals at the library.” (American Library Association).

(Image courtesy of American Library Association)


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“Celebrate Yourself” during National Library Week

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Library staff in school and public libraries are incredible! In your library, it can be easy to feel like you are a one person force of nature. Developing the library program and keeping up with day-to-day duties can be exhausting. Sometimes it feels like National Library Week is just “one more thing” to added to our to-do pile.

We have to remember that many of our community partners and non-library colleagues have a lot going on in their world and may not be aware that it’s National Library Week. If you don’t celebrate yourself, it can’t be guaranteed that others will be celebrating you.


How to celebrate National Library Week in simple ways:

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