May is Mental Health Awareness Month. Libraries play a critical and often overlooked role in helping their patrons and communities address mental health challenges. Libraries in Texas are taking this responsibility to heart, and one did so with help from the American Library Association.
Since 2022, the American Library Association’s Libraries Transforming Communities: Accessible Small and Rural Communities initiative has awarded grants to 662 small and rural libraries nationwide. In the latest round of funding, 300 libraries will receive money to enhance accessibility to facilities, services, and programs for people with disabilities. Seventy-three percent of these round-three grantees serve populations of 5,000 people or less.
In Goldthwaite, a small, but vibrant town of approximately 1,700 people in central Texas, Jennie Trent Dew Library fills many voids in a community that is missing essential nonprofit and civic organizations. This made the library an ideal candidate for ALA’s Libraries Transforming Communities: Accessible Small and Rural Communities grant, an initiative to assist small and rural libraries in providing greater accessibility of facilities, services, and programs for patrons with disabilities.
In the latter half of the 2010s, 6th graders at Wyoming (Ohio) Middle School took a class that gave them firsthand experience in addressing food disparity in the community—one that ended up winning the school in the Cincinnati suburbs a grant from the American Library Association.
We’ve made some changes here at I Love Libraries, but one thing has remained the same: our dedication to sharing the wonderful world of libraries with you. And the facelift allows us to do that in exciting, new ways.
Raina Telgemeier and Scott McCloud are legends in the comic book world—and huge supporters of the American Library Association. They want you to support ALA too.
Residents of Redding, Connecticut, can now connect with loved ones experiencing memory loss thanks to a program implemented at Mark Twain Library. And it all began with one simple patron request.
A school librarian in Texas created an award-winning interactive “Freedom Walk” to teach students and the community how censorship issues affect library access.
In response to results of the 2024 United States election, the American Library Association has vowed to continue its defense of the core values of librarianship in the face of political threats. What are the core values?
LeVar Burton, actor, director, author, and former host of “Reading Rainbow,” was honored this week with the National Humanities Medal for his acting and literacy advocacy work in a ceremony at the White House. Seventeen distinguished humanists and two humanities organizations were recognized at the event.
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