"Chemistry in the Public Library" is an outreach event that has fostered a continuing, long-standing partnership between The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington (a public, liberal arts college), the Olympia Timberland Regional Library (the local public library), and the community. It started as a National Chemistry Week event…

Public libraries are ideal contexts for supporting child development and family involvement (Families and Work Institute, 2015; IMLS, 2013). Families with children often attend public libraries to participate in educational programming and experiences, yet university-based developmental scientists who study how people develop and adapt across the…

University researchers are asked to make their work relevant and accessible to people beyond their research fields, increasingly by undertaking public engagement with science themselves. However, academic outreach often only reaches an already-science-attentive audience through traditional museum visits or lecture-style presentations. Even…

Pathways to higher education can appear opaque and unattainable to rural adults, despite the affordances provided by modern broadband and increasing provision of university online learning options. This paper describes an innovative partnership model that connects rural adults to university and technical and further education pathways through…

Many librarians work in public libraries to make a difference for children, families, and communities and identify family and community engagement as a cornerstone of their responsibilities. For librarians to be successful they must be afforded strong foundations in family and community engagement that begin early in their preparation. Yet little…

For the Spring 2015 semester of the Public Library Management course, students were given digital badges along with grades for their coursework. For each topic's corresponding assignment, students received a traditional grade and those achieving at least an A- received a digital badge that represented the skill or knowledge demonstrated. By using…

The Exploring Making Through Mobile Emergent Technologies (EMMET) program sought to disrupt the trajectory from rural high school to factory floor by introducing STEM and computational thinking (STEM+C) skills through mentorship training and hands-on activities involving creative production--often referred to as "making." The program…

The purpose of this study was to describe the methods--including practices, policies, and roles--used by public and academic library staff in a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Racial and Ethnic Approach to Community Health (REACH) intervention that proved successful in reducing or eliminating several diabetes-related health…