News in Brief

Feb 3, 2022

Graphic of a "Wyoming State Library" newspaper with "News in Brief" headlineShowcase Your Best Marketing Pieces by Applying for the Core PR Xchange Awards
Applications are open for the 2022 PR Xchange Awards. This competition recognizes the very best public relations materials produced by libraries in the past year. Entries are evaluated on content, originality, and design by a team of experts in public relations, graphic design, communications, and marketing. This competition is unique in the way it evaluates a library’s individual promotional materials, not an entire marketing campaign. The deadline to apply is April 15.

Mountain Plains Library Association Conference Call for Proposals
The call has gone out for program proposals for the 2022 Tri-Conference with Mountain Plains Library Association (MPLA),  Montana Library Association (MLA) and Pacific Northwest Library Association (PNLA). The conference, with the theme of Building Bridges/Renewing Community, will be held August 3-6 in Missoula, Montana. Program proposal deadline is March 1.

U.S. Surgeon General Issues Advisory on Youth Mental Health Crisis
U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy issued a new Surgeon General’s Advisory to highlight the urgent need to address the nation’s youth mental health crisis. The Advisory on Protecting Youth Mental Health outlines the pandemic’s unprecedented impacts on the mental health of America’s youth and families, as well as the mental health challenges that existed long before the pandemic.

Children in Trauma Bibliography
The Children in Trauma bibliography was created by Dr. Megan McCaffrey, assistant professor in the Division of Education at Governors State University. Categorized by theme, the bibliography includes books that address traumas such as domestic abuse and bullying; general grief and loss; illness, anxiety, and depression; pandemics; poverty; and more.

FCC Affordable Connectivity Program Outreach Toolkit Available
The Affordable Connectivity Program was created by the FCC to help households struggling to pay for internet service. As part of that effort, the FCC is mobilizing people and organizations to help raise awareness about the ACP. This toolkit is available for public use; materials may be downloaded and customized.

Serving Underserved Communities: EDI in Action
This year, the Library Service to Underserved Children and Their Caregivers Committee transitioned its Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) goal. They started with providing authentic resources, then moved to empowering library (and library adjacent) staff to hone, develop, and take action on their advocacy skills. They’re providing support and different ways to interact with the resources, like presentations, chats, and monthly blog posts. Over the past 18 months, they have developed vibrant toolkits to help connect library communities with resources for different underserved populations.

New Research: First-Year College Students Need Support Assessing Authority
Every day library staff in every setting strive to teach people how to find the information they need and how to identify trustworthy sources. Instructors students struggle with the concept of different types of authority being more or less relevant in different contexts. New research examines first-year college students’ perceptions and skills in evaluating information.

Why Is Children’s Literature Still Fat-phobic?
Close your eyes and throw a dart in the children’s section, and you’ll probably hit a book that has fat-phobia. It may have a snide comment about a fat character – or a book with no fat characters at all. I’m not sure which one is worse. It’s practically a tradition in children’s literature to depict fatness as synonymous with gluttony, with ugliness, with stupidity, or with evil. Where does this fatphobia come from, and why do we put up with it? This blog post from the ASLC examines the issue.

Fight Censorship! Updated Resources from the Office for Intellectual Freedom
Book challenges have been a hot topic in news and politics lately. The American Library Association (ALA) Executive Board and eight divisions recently released a statement affirming its opposition to widespread efforts to censor books in U.S. Schools. OIF has tracked 155 unique censorship incidents between June 1, 2021 and September 30, 2021. With the high volume of challenges right now, OIF has made available a clearinghouse of resources on its Fight Censorship page.

Resource Helps Librarians Address Challenges to Problematic Authors
Librarians face an increasing number of book challenges, but today the objections are increasingly reaching beyond the books themselves, with the focus shifting to the personalities of the authors themselves based on activities that often go beyond the scope of what they commit to the printed page. The American Library Association’s (ALA) Intellectual Freedom Committee (IFC) is offering a new resource, Addressing Challenges to Books by Problematic Authors: Q&A, that will help librarians navigate this new and often intimidating terrain.

School Library Collection Policies Analyzed in New Research
Newly published research from the American Association of School Librarians’ (AASL) peer-reviewed online journal, School Library Research (SLR), analyzes the status of selection policies in school libraries and whether the policies reflect the recommendations of professional literature. Articles can be accessed for free at www.ala.org/aasl/slr.

American Library Association Announces 2022 Youth Media Award Winners
The American Library Association (ALA) today announced the top books, digital media, video and audio books for children and young adults – including the Caldecott, Coretta Scott King, Newbery and Printz awards. See the list of winners. ALA awards guide parents, educators, librarians and others in selecting the best materials for youth. Selected by judging committees of librarians and other children’s experts, the awards encourage original and creative work.

First-ever Best Graphic Novels for Children Reading List Announced
The American Library Association’s Graphic Novels & Comics Round Table (GNCRT) is thrilled to introduce the 2021 Best Graphic Novels for Children (BGNC) Reading List. This reading list highlights the best graphic novels for children aged 5 – 12 years old, published in late 2020 and through 2021, and it aims to increase awareness of the graphic novel medium, raise voices of diverse comics creators, and aid library staff in the development of graphic novel collections.

PLA 2022 Virtual Conference Registration is Now Open
Can’t make it to Portland? Join the Public Library Association online for the PLA 2022 Virtual Conference instead! The Virtual Conference schedule has been expanded to offer live programming across all three days of the in-person conference (March 23–25).

If you have a question about this or any other article, please contact us at statelibrary@wyo.gov

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