Facing eviction, temporarily out of work, and with no stable income, Theresa Morgan was at her wit’s end, desperate to keep a roof over the heads of her four children, until she learned she could find help in a seemingly unlikely place – the Library.

Since July (2020), the New Orleans Public Library has been partnering with Southeast Louisiana Legal Services to offer free Virtual Legal Clinics to eligible Library users twice a month, focusing on assisting low-income families and individuals with civil legal issues.

Morgan, whose name has been changed in this article to protect her privacy,... Read more

Self-care has long been recommended and recognized as important. It's easy to find articles about the value of self-care: eat healthy, get plenty of sleep, exercise regularly. It can get exhausting just reading about all the things we should be doing to feel better. How can we help self-care feel less like a burden and more like genuine kindness and nurturing? What if we could tap into our larger community to bolster our own well-being while increasing social cohesion for all? There is a continuum – from self-care to staff (workplace) care to community care – that gets stronger as... Read more

As part of the Improving Access to Civil Legal Justice initiative, OCLC’s WebJunction will deliver resources that focus on strengthening library staff’s ability to respond to eviction questions with confidence and close the justice gap in their communities. In this article, learn about how a Colorado public library’s free legal clinic connected Alayna Walker with a volunteer lawyer to contest eviction and other legal citations filed against her. Register for the 18 November webinar “Understanding Evictions and How Libraries Can Help” to learn more about evictions in the United States and where libraries can make a difference.  

In... Read more

October is a great time to revisit your learning goals for the year. Before the end-of-year and holiday rush, set aside some time to gather new knowledge, skills, or confidence, for the important work you do in meeting your community's ever-changing needs. Explore this list of over 60 webinars and four online conferences covering 21 topic areas. Thank you to the Wyoming State Library for collecting this list of learning opportunities! It's updated monthly on the Free Training page, where you can also view the offerings by topic.

For additional training, check out the WebJunction Catalog, free and open... Read more