First ever National Library Outreach Day to take place during National Library Week
Libraries across the country will observe National Library Outreach Day on April 7, 2021. Formerly known as National Bookmobile Day, communities will celebrate the invaluable role library professionals and libraries continuous play in bringing library services to those in need. The American Library Association (ALA), the Association of Bookmobile and Outreach Services (ABOS), and the Association for Rural and Small Libraries (ARSL) agreed to rebrand National Bookmobile Day in recognition of all that outreach library professional do within their communities.
ALA 2021 Annual Conference & Exhibition (Virtual) Registration Open
Registration for the American Library Association (ALA) Annual Conference & Exhibition, June 23-29, 2021 is now open. The event will include educational programming, the News You Can Use series, memorable featured speakers, special author events, The Library Marketplace, Presidents’ Programs, Discussion Groups, leading authors, live-chat presentations, and networking opportunities.
New Toolkit to Address Accessibility to Technology
The Library Service to Underserved Children and Their Caregivers committee is devoting the 2020-2021 calendar year to creating vibrant, dynamic toolkits with up-to-date resources for working with marginalized populations. February’s toolkit focuses on accessibility to technology and its impact on children.
Finding Footage for National History Day Projects
The U.S. National Archives has put together a list of films that relate to this year’s National History Day theme, Communication in History: The Key to Understanding. All of these titles can be downloaded from the National Archives Catalog. This is by no means an exhaustive list. In addition, students may be able to find more general footage in their online holdings by searching within their moving image collections.
Library of Congress Builds New Collections Documenting COVID-19 Pandemic
As the world marks the one-year anniversary of the global COVID-19 pandemic, the Library of Congress has been collecting materials and documenting this time in history through a variety of initiatives. The Library’s rapid-response collecting since the start of lockdowns and social distancing measures over the past year has included acquiring photographs that document the pandemic’s impact on individuals and communities, capturing artists’ responses to the outbreak, mapping the pandemic’s spread and archiving the world’s response online.
A New World War II Teaching Resource
The U.S. National Archives has a brand new World War II page on DocsTeach, the online tool for teaching with documents. The page includes hundreds of primary sources and teaching activities for WWII. You’ll find primary source sets for a variety of WWII topics. The new page also includes several teaching activities for use online or in the classroom.