WebJunction to Support Three New IMLS Grants
OCLC’s WebJunction program will support efforts in three new Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) grant projects. WebJunction will serve as advisory, dissemination, or design partners on one IMLS National Leadership Grant and two Laura Bush 21st Century Librarian Program grants.
The WebJunction team will be working with partners on these IMLS grants, leveraging their experience and expertise in designing, delivering, and disseminating transformational programs that connect public library service to community needs. Read summaries of these responsive new projects below to learn more.
Libraries Count: Support Diverse Young Children and their Families in Math
East Tennessee State University will partner with the School of Library and Information Studies at the University of Alabama to create and evaluate an online professional learning program, Libraries Count, for library staff to integrate math into programming for young children and their families. Project activities will include codeveloping the program with key stakeholders from a culturally-responsive, strengths-based perspective in diverse settings; piloting, evaluating, and iteratively improving the program; rolling out and evaluating the impacts of the program at scale through WebJunction across the pilot and additional states; and publishing the final program on OCLC's WebJunction for libraries to access for free and disseminating the results through the Association of Rural and Small Libraries (ARSL), the Collaborative Summer Library Program, ConnectedLib, Young Mathematicians, and other collaborators. As a subrecipient, the University of Alabama will lead the portions of the project that involve connecting with libraries, resolving issues related to libraries and families in rural settings, and library training.
Building Equity-Based Summers Through Libraries and Communities
The California Library Association will collaborate with the National Summer Learning Association and OCLC’s WebJunction to work with library staff across the country on the Building Equity-based Summers project to build equity into summer services. The project will bring opportunities for states to re-envision summer services and effectively engage youth and families from minority communities. Activities will include codesign and training, reflection on learning, review and iteration of materials, a community of practice, opportunities to connect with community stakeholders, and implementation of equity-based practices. The project will result in enhanced skills for library staff to work with youth and families from minority communities and state library administrative agency staff in codesigning and bringing equity-based initiatives to library staff in their state, as well as the youth, families, and adults who, through targeted equity-based opportunities, will learn, grow, and thrive.
Digital Playful Exploratory Resources to Combat Mis/disinformation
The University of Washington Information School, in collaboration with the Seattle Public Library, San Diego Public Library, and rural libraries and Washington and Colorado, will codesign a set of innovative online play-based digital activities for children around combating misinformation in libraries. Activities will include researching and writing a white paper on children and misinformation; codesigning activities between librarians, teen leaders, and children; developing digital play-based activities; creating a scalable online codesign curriculum for librarians to create their own play-based misinformation activities; and building a hub for accessing all the project resources. Families and children, public librarians and educators, researchers, and designers will benefit from this project.
Stay tuned for updates on our work on these new grants by subscribing to Crossroads, WebJunction's email newsletter.
About the Institute of Museum and Library Services
The Institute of Museum and Library Services is the primary source of federal support for the nation's libraries and museums. We advance, support, and empower America's museums, libraries, and related organizations through grantmaking, research, and policy development. Our vision is a nation where museums and libraries work together to transform the lives of individuals and communities.
National Leadership Grants for Libraries support projects of national impact that address significant challenges and opportunities facing the library and archives fields and have the potential to advance theory and practice with new tools, research findings, models, services, practices, or alliances that will be widely used. The National Leadership Grants for Libraries program received 139 preliminary proposals requesting $35,611,073. 74 projects were invited to submit full proposals, and of these, 39 projects were awarded $11,470,266.
The Laura Bush 21st Century Librarian Program supports projects of far-reaching impact that develop a diverse workforce of library and archives professionals to better serve the changing learning and information needs of the American public by enhancing the training and professional development of librarians, develop faculty and library leaders, and recruit and educate the next generation of librarians. The program received 104 preliminary proposals requesting $29,083,329, and 59 of these were invited to submit full proposals. IMLS is awarding $9,719,300 to 32 projects.