FYI: The Public Libraries Podcast

PLA's Brendan Dowling hosts a conversation with Lainey Mays and Christopher Connelley of the HarperCollins Library LoveFest team, and an interview with Juliet Grames, whose first novel, "The Seven or Eight Deaths of Stella Fortuna," will be released in the Spring.

The United States has one of the highest teen pregnancy rates in the western industrialized world and studies show that children of teen parents are less prepared for school, perform less well, and have a higher dropout rate than other children. As many librarians know, it is challenging enough to get teens into the library for teen-specific programming, add a baby to the mix and it becomes nearly impossible. So how do you reach this group with crucial early literacy information? Go where they are! In this episode we talk with Clair Larkin, author of "Teaching Early Literacy to Teen Parents" the latest release in PLA's Quick Reads series. Larkin details how, just like all parents, teen parents want their children to succeed, and also how the library can support them in this mission by bringing early literacy programming into local schools. Using Every Child Ready to Read principles and programming tips from San Antonio Public Library’s “Little Read Wagon,” we discuss how you can create a similar program that meets the needs of your community’s teen parents.

Our guest is Elizabeth Fitzgerald, director of the Culinary Literacy Center at the Free Library of Philadelphia. The Culinary Literacy Center is the first kitchen classroom in a public library in the United States. Here we discuss the Culinary LIteracy Center, why culinary literacy is important, how libraries can offer this type of programming, and more.

We talk with Licensed Clinical Social Worker and Community Resource Manager at the Denver Public Library, Elissa Hardy about the emerging trend of employing social workers in public libraries, serving persons experiencing homelessness at the library, making the library and inclusive space, training library staff, and related issues.

This episode focuses on Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion, EDI for short and features three guest who've been working tirelessly in this arena. Amita Lonial leads our conversation. Amita, (she/her/hers) is currently the Principal Librarian for Learning, Marketing, and Engagement at San Diego County Library. She also currently serves as the co-chair for the PLA Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Task Force. Racial and social justice is something she have always been passionate about. Prior to becoming a librarian she spent 8 years in the non-profit sector working with organizations engaged in direct action organizing and policy reform. Working in public libraries has deepened her commitment to doing liberation based work in our communities and with library staff. Katie Dover-Taylor is a Reference Librarian at the William P. Faust Public Library in Westland, Michigan, where she focuses on library technology and digital literacy training. Katie has developed her understanding of power and oppression in public libraries through both community organizing and scholarship. In 2015 and 2016, Katie co-coordinated the Radical Librarianship Track at the Allied Media Conference, bringing the first official gathering of library-centric content to an annual conference which draws a diverse spectrum of creative and technology-savvy people engaged in social justice work. In 2017, Katie co-authored the chapter "Disrupting Whiteness: Three Perspectives on White Anti-Racist Librarianship" for Topographies of Whiteness: Mapping Whiteness in Library and Information Science. She is currently a member of PLA's Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Task Force. Mia Henry (she/her/hers) is the Executive Director of the Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership. Mia joined the team in 2014 with over 18 years of experience in nonprofit management, training facilitation, intergenerational community organizing, and civic and history education. Mia was the founding director of the Chicago Freedom School (CFS), a nonprofit organization that supports youth-led social change and youth-adult partnerships in community organizing. Since her work with CFS, Mia has been a consultant nationally with Safe Places for the Advancement of Community and Equity (SPACEs), and in Chicago with the Chicago History Museum, Chicago Public Schools, the University of Chicago Hospital, and the University of Chicago Oriental Institute. Mia is the owner and operator of Freedom Lifted, a small business dedicated to providing civil rights tours. She is also the founder of Reclaiming South Shore for All, a diverse, grassroots group of residents committed to mobilizing the South Shore (Chicago) community and institutionalizing systems that promote peace, youth leadership, and political accountability. She has been a visiting lecturer at the University of Illinois at Chicago and Harold Washington College, as well as a high school history teacher and International Baccalaureate (IB) program coordinator for Chicago Public Schools. Mia is deeply passionate about social movement history, positive youth development, and civic engagement through an anti-oppression lens. She serves on the Boards of Directors for the Mikva Challenge and the Community Justice for Youth Institute. Mia earned her B.S. from Rutgers University and her M.S.Ed. from the University of Pennsylvania.

We talk with Carolyn Martin and Sally James about providing Health Information Services and in particular evaluating health news. Carolyn Martin is a librarian who is the Consumer Health Coordinator for the National Network of Libraries of Medicine (NNLM) Pacific Northwest Region. Sally James reads health news critically and gives grades to stories and news releases as a part of a team at the nonprofit Health News Review. She also writes about medical research and other science as a freelancer from Seattle.

We talk with John Spears, Director of the Pikes Peak (Colorado) Public Library about challenges and opportunities in serving patrons experiencing homelessness at the public library, educating the public, tensions in the community, efforts to expand initiatives, and more.

In this podcast, we discuss Graphic Medicine, which can be defined as the use of comics (graphic narratives) in health sciences education and patient care. Our guests are Susan Squier and Ellen Forney. Susan Squier is Professor Emerita of English and Women's Studies at Penn State University, where she taught graphic narratives (comics!) to graduate students. She is now Visiting Fellow at the Freie Universität, Berlin (the Free University, that is) where she is part of a collaboration called the PathoGraphics project, a study of the relations between illness narratives (also called pathographies) and comics about medicine, illness, disability and caregiving. She is a co-editor of the Graphic Medicine book series at Penn State Press, which publishes long form graphic narratives, graphic narratives for classroom use, and scholarly studies of works of graphic medicine. Ellen Forney is the author of the New York Times bestseller "Marbles: Mania, Depression, Michelangelo, and Me," a graphic memoir about her bipolar disorder. Her new book, the follow-up to Marbles, is a self-help guide to maintaining stability with a mood disorder. It’s called "Rock Steady: Brilliant Advice from My Bipolar Life," and will be out this May. She teaches comics at Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle.

We talk with Nicholas Higgins, director of Outreach Services at the Brooklyn (NY) Public Library. Higgins, author of the latest book in the PLA Quick Reads series, shares wisdom gleaned from his years of experience providing library service to incarcerated persons; provides a thoughtful perspective on the American criminal justice system and shows how to provide the absolute best service to this group and the families they have left behind.

Librarian Kyra Hahn shares her experiences navigating the intense bureaucracy of the Federal Public Service Student Loan (PSLF) program and provides tips, advice, and explanations that can make the process easier for applicants.