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This volunteer opportunity invites teens to register and meets monthly throughout the school year. And the teens are in charge of deciding the kinds of activities with which the group engages - from community food drives to pop-up Halloween pumpkins scattered across town!

CT Pages is a channel for sharing community engagement success stories by libraries with and for their communities. We partner with CT libraries to create and release short video conversations with the library staff who make things happen.

Do you have a creative program, service, activity, partnership, or project that you want to share with your library neighbors? We are always seeking submissions for consideration – Submit your idea!

DLD at CLA in MAY!

Division of Library Development staff will be at this year's CLA Conference on May 1 and 2 with tables for CTLAB/MLSC, CTLPDE, and the CT Digital Newspaper Project. We're excited for the opportunity to talk with you in person about the programs and services we have to offer libraries and their patrons throughout the state. Come on over and say hello!

Click the following link for more information about the 2023 CLA Conference.

Use them for in-house story times or lend them out to your patrons. And of course, you’re always welcome to browse all available book bundles! 

Important borrowIT CT Information  

Attention Public Libraries: 

1. borrowIT CT funding is $703,638 in FY2023. This is identical to last year. 

2. 2022-2023 borrowIT CT Payments. Payments will be going out to libraries soon. Municipal libraries should check with their Town Treasurers to make sure these funds are made available to the library, as required by statute. Look up your library’s payment amount online.

3. Reporting borrowIT CT Loans March 2023 to February 2024. Download the borrowIT CT Loans Excel report form, which you will then send to the State Data Coordinator after the borrowIT year ends next February.

4. Your Library’s Statistics. For information on your library’s Payments, Loans, Borrows, and Net Plus Loans in the 2022-2023 year as well as the previous 12 years, use the borrowIT CT Report Creator.  

5. Required Expenditure Report. Libraries must report now how they spent the payment they received a year ago (April 2022). Most libraries have already spent this money, so please go to this survey form and submit your figures.

You do not need to submit a paper form. Due October 31.  

6. borrowIT Regulations. Access the borrowIT CT Regulations.

Some reminders:

• “Non-resident loans" are loans of library materials to any non-resident who visits your library in person to borrow items that are on the shelf, showing their valid borrower card issued by their home library. Using their hometown cards, non-residents may visit any public library and borrow any of the materials that participating libraries lend to their local borrowers. 

• “In no case shall a library issue a card to a non-resident for use as a borrowIT CT borrower card.” If you choose to issue a card to a non-resident, the card must include a “for use in the [issuing library] only” statement on the card. 

• By statute sec. 11-31b, the payment “may be used for general library purposes and no portion of the grant money shall revert to the general fund of the town...” 

Thanks for your library’s participation in borrowIT CT. 

Let's talk about how to make documents accessible both on paper and digitally. This session will focus on Word and PowerPoint, though the principles discussed can be applied to competitor software.

JJ Pionke, Applied Health Sciences Librarian at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, will lead a discussion talk about how to make documents accessible. JJ is an award-winning librarian whose research revolves around disability and accessibility for library patrons and employees.  

• Connecticut Laws Affecting Public Libraries
• Quick Guide to Governance, laws, and eligibility
• Best Practices for CT Public Libraries
• Policies
• DLD Resources, Consultants and Training
• Partner Organizations
• Record Retention

DLD consultants will be on hand to answer your specific project and program questions.

If your library is thinking of applying for a construction grant from the CT State Library, this webinar will walk you through the process. You'll learn what you need to do before applying as well as what's required after you receive the grant.

We'll cover funding categories, application process, grant application evaluation, timeline, grant contract, starting and managing the project, state requirements, and advice.

Grant Requirement: Attendance at a construction grant information session is a requirement for all applicants. An additional session will be offered May 24, 2023. Participants only need to attend one session.

Who must attend? Association Libraries - Library Director and Building Committee Chair. Municipal Libraries - Library Director, Town Manager or chief executive (Mayor, First Selectman).

Who should come? Anyone considering a public library renovation or construction project, including library directors/administrators, library board chair and members, municipal leaders, procurement officers, and building committee members.

Recommended for all library staff, including librarians, administrators, managers, volunteers, etc.

• Why are pronouns important?
• Common pronouns
• They/Them pronouns
• Neopronouns
• Genderless pronouns for addressing groups
• How/When to ask someone their pronouns
• Normalizing the conversation around pronouns

JJ Pionke is the Applied Health Sciences Librarian at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is an award-winning librarian whose research revolves around disability and accessibility for library patrons and employees. His most recent work focuses on the educational and competency needs of library science graduate students and current library employees regarding disability and accessibility in libraries.

The most critical partnership in a public library is that between the library director and the public library trustee. Join Jerry Nichols for an interactive session that will address public librarianship core values; duties and responsibilities of public library trustees; duties and responsibilities of the public library director; how to make the partnership work and the value of effective meetings.

Mental Health First Aid teaches you how to identify, understand and respond to signs of mental illness and substance use disorders. This training gives you the skills you need to reach out and provide initial support to someone who may be developing a mental health or substance use problem and help connect them to the appropriate care.

• On average, 123 people die by suicide each day. (Source: American Foundation for Suicide Prevention)
• Nearly 1 in 5 U.S. adults lives with a mental illness. (Source: National Institute of Mental Health via the National Survey on Drug Use and Health and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration)

What Mental Health First Aid Covers:

• Common signs and symptoms of mental illness
• Common signs and symptoms of substance use
• How to interact with a person in crisis
• How to connect the person with help
• NEW: Expanded content on trauma, addiction and self-care

This workshop provides concrete examples and ways to avoid and correct these mistakes that can be put into everyday use immediately:

• Regarding pronouns
• Language to avoid
• Common mistakes to avoid when speaking with or about LGBTQ+ individuals
• Common mistakes to avoid when addressing transgender and gender nonconforming individuals
• Scenarios
• Q&A

Youth Mental Health First Aid teaches you how to identify, understand and respond to signs of mental health and substance use challenges among children and adolescents ages 12-18.

• 1 in 5 teens and young adults lives with a mental health condition. (Source: National Alliance for Mental Illness)
• 50% of all mental illnesses begin by age 14, and 75% by the mid-20s. (Source: Archives of General Psychiatry)

What Mental Health First Aid Covers:

• Common signs and symptoms of mental health challenges in this age group, including anxiety, depression, eating disorders, and attention deficit hyperactive disorder (ADHD).
• Common signs and symptoms of substance use challenges.
• How to interact with a child or adolescent in crisis.
• How to connect the youth with help.
• Expanded content on trauma, substance use, self-care, and the impact of social media and bullying.

Visit our calendar

April 24-28 is Military Saves Week. Military Saves is a component of America Saves, and as a participant in the Department of Defense Financial Readiness Network seeks to motivate, support, and encourage military families to save money, reduce debt, and build wealth. 

Each day during the week of April 24, there will be a specific theme related to financial wellness:

Day 1 (April 24): Saving Automatically

Day 2 (April 25): Save for the Unexpected

Day 3 (April 26): Save for Major Milestones

Day 4 (April 27): Paying Down Your Debt Is Saving

Day 5 (April 28): Saving at Any Age

If you want to participate as an organization, getting started is easy!

Even if you don't formally participate, you can create displays or provide links on your website to share this valuable resource.

Thanks to the efforts of the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA), we were able to get 1,132 items that we had purchased from RBDigital returned to us and added to the Palace app. This perpetual ownership content is valued at over $66,000. You can view a complete list of these titles on our Middletown Library Service Center: eGO CT LibGuide. 

During the month of March, DLD purchased a total of 617 items for both eGO CT and the Palace app. There are now 25,425 items provided for free to public libraries. This includes 15,888 open access titles provided by Lyrasis in the Palace Bookshelf. 

DLD is continuing to work with Baker & Taylor to bring the eGO CT Community Share Program to Connecticut schools. This program allows DLD to deliver eBook and eAudio content, including Nutmeg, Charter Oak, Summer Reading, and All CT Reads titles from eGO CT directly to schools in Connecticut. To date, we have 107 sites that are active in the program, and over 1,000 items have been purchased specifically for this program.