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Two Student Awards Available This Fall!
The Saskatchewan Library Association is excited to offer two awards for MLIS students this Fall: the Maureen Woods Education Award and the Indigenous MLIS Student Award.
These awards aim to promote the continued growth of professional librarianship and provide financial support in the form of a $5,000 award. They are open to anyone who, at the time of the award application, has been accepted to or is enrolled in an ALA-accredited graduate degree program for a Master of Library and Information Science or equivalent.
Applications are now open and will close on October 31.
To learn more, please click the buttons below.
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Continuing Education Grant Applications Now Open
Are you interested in attending a specific workshop or conference? Do you have an upcoming industry event in mind? SLA's Continuing Education Grants provide financial support for attending or hosting industry-related educational opportunities! Applications are now open for both individual and organizational members.
Individual members can receive up to $500, while organizations can receive up to $1,000 to cover eligible expenses.
Grant applications are now open and will close on September 15. To apply, use the links provided below.
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Regional Park Pass Lending Program Coming to an End
We would like to extend our gratitude to all our library partners, the Saskatchewan Regional Parks Association, and the Saskatchewan Parks and Recreation Association!
Please note that the program will conclude on September 8. If you haven’t had the opportunity to borrow your free regional park pass yet, we encourage you to contact your local library to check for availability.
For our library partners, please continue to remind park pass borrowers to complete the program evaluation survey. This feedback is essential for us to demonstrate the program's value and advocate for its continuation in the future!
| Program Leads—Thank you for your work in facilitating this fantastic program with your community neighbours. We will shortly require your program circulation statistics, so please watch for an email with further details! | |
Register Your Culture Days Event
Culture Days is just around the corner, starting on September 18! Is your library planning a Culture Days program or event? If so, consider registering your event on the Culture Days website.
Registering your event allows more people to connect with you and participate. The deadline to register is Friday, September 4, at 11:59 PM ET. To get started, simply create an account on the Culture Days website and log in!
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2026 TD Summer Reading Club: Statistics and Evaluation
Forum Research Inc. will collect statistics for the 2026 TD Summer Reading Club (TDSRC) this September. Library statistics contacts will receive an email from tplsurvey@forumresearch.com with a link to the online statistics and evaluation form. Libraries are encouraged to whitelist this email address to avoid missing the survey.
Libraries should update their statistics contact information in the staff portal by August 10 and submit the online form by September 30. Please submit on time to be eligible for the Library Awards and a StoryWalk® kit next summer.
New this year, libraries can include online registration totals, available by age category under Child Statistics in the staff portal.
Libraries with questions about the survey content should contact their regional administrator or the TDSRC Manager at jessicaroy@tpl.ca. For technical issues with the online survey, libraries should contact Forum Research Inc. at tplsurvey@forumresearch.com and copy jessicaroy@tpl.ca.
Click the button below for more information.
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TD Summer Reading Club 2026 Library Awards and CELA Accessibility Award
Public libraries participating in the 2026 TD Summer Reading Club are encouraged to prepare for the upcoming Library Awards application process. Eligible libraries must have been registered for the 2026 program, delivered the Club for at least six weeks, followed branding guidelines, and completed all required reporting and application materials.
Applications are limited to one submission per library per year and must be submitted in either the English or French stream. Award recipients are required to reinvest prize funds in their library’s children’s services and participate in promotional activities.
Please note that libraries that receive an award will be ineligible to apply again for the following three years.
CELA Accessibility Award
The deadline to submit your TD Summer Reading Club Accessibility Award application is also October 2, 2026.
For more detailed information, please click the button below.
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SLA's Prison Library Sub-Committee's quarterly book recommendation section in SLAte is an opportunity to consider Canada's justice system, the lived experiences of incarcerated people, and the importance of having accessible resources while incarcerated.
This month, we recommend the
Reconciliation and Indigenous Justice: A Search for Ways Forward by David Milward.
While the residential school system may not be the only harmful process of colonization that fuels Indigenous over-incarceration, it is arguably the most critical factor. The residential school system likely forms an important part of the background of almost every Indigenous person who ends up incarcerated, even those who did not attend the schools. The legacy of harm caused by the schools is a vivid and crucial link between Canadian colonialism and Indigenous over-incarceration. Reconciliation and Indigenous Justice provides an account of the ongoing ties between the enduring trauma caused by the residential schools and Indigenous over-incarceration.
We encourage you to visit your local library or independent bookstore to pick up a copy today!
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• September 1 - Maureen Woods Education Award Applications Open
• September 1 - Indigenous MLIS Student Award Applications Open
• September 15 - Continuing Education Grant Applications Close
• September 18 - Culture Days Begins!
• September 18 - Book Spine Poetry Contest Opens
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Hello, everyone,
Would you believe me if I told you that there is a small but growing body of scientific research on the wellness effects of doomscrolling? If you may unfamiliar with the concept, “doomscrolling" is a term used to describe both the practice of continually seeking out negative or distressing information online and the practice of aimlessly consuming social media content. Despite being a relatively new phenomenon, both the word and the practice became prominent enough during the COVID-19 pandemic that “doomscrolling” was selected as New Zealand’s Word of the Year for 2020. (By contrast, the usage of the term “brain rot”—the Oxford Word of the Year for 2024—dates back to 1854, first appearing in Henry David Thoreau’s Walden. Everything old is new again!)
A 2026 literature review by University of Chichester researchers for the journal of Mental Health and Digital Technologies, as well as a 2024 study by Turkiye University researchers published in 2025 by the journal of Personality and Individual Differences, find that doomscrolling increases the likeliness of higher levels of psychological distress, correspondingly lowering the indicator levels of mental well-being, and shows consistent associations with anxiety, depression, stress, and reduced mental resilience.
(To crib an old Norm Macdonald joke: “This is according to a new study in the medical journal ‘DUH’.” )
Wilfrid Laurier University psychology lecturer Ali Jasemi has written that these effects are not a weakness of character or a generational gap, but simply an overload of the human neurological system, which had evolved to process and prioritize threats and shocks back before we all had constant, unlimited around-the-clock access to everything bad that is happening everywhere all of the time.
Fortunately, like any behaviour, doomscrolling can be consciously recognized and actively changed; mitigation strategies can include limiting your news consumption to certain windows of time during the day, setting a timer on your watch or phone to limit your scrolling time, being more selective about where and how you get your news and information, choosing long-form content over short randomized burst content, avoiding “rage bait” (the Oxford Word of the Year for 2025, as it happens), and identifying stories or topics that can generate some degree of personal agency by enabling you to make even small progress, actions or changes. (Like this one!)
I’ll cop to this month’s column also being a physician-heal-thyself kinda deal, as someone who has made a concerted effort in recent years to spend less time on his phone when the news cycle is dominated by bad news outside of anyone’s control. Am I bringing this up in this month’s issue because last week included the death of Dolly Parton, the death of Tim Curry and the death of Peter Cullen in about a forty-eight hour span? Well, I’m not not bringing this up because of all that, if you get me.
Workin’ 9 to 5,
James Hope Howard
SLA President
| | maci-nihithawiwin/Beginning Woods Cree: University of Regina Press Book Launch | | |
The Dr. John Archer Library & Archives, in collaboration with the University of Regina Press, warmly invites you to the launch of maci-nihithawiwin/Beginning Woods Cree. This book is authored by the distinguished Cree writer Solomon Ratt, who is also a retired professor at the First Nations University of Canada.
The event will include a panel discussion featuring respected participants Tammy Ratt and Jesse Archibald Barber. This one-hour session is free and open to the public. Attendees can participate in person at the Dr. John Archer Library & Archives on the University of Regina Main Campus, or join online via Zoom.
When: 12:00–1:00 p.m., Wednesday, September 9, 2026
Where: Dr. John Archer Library & Archives, University of Regina Main Campus, or virtual participation via Zoom
Admission is Free
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SLAte Submissions
Do you have something you’d like to see in SLAte? Send us your submission! The deadline for SLAte submissions is the 20th of each month, and submissions must be emailed to Marielle Escover at MEscover@saskla.ca. SLA reserves the right to change or edit any submission, or to refuse publication in its entirety.
SLAte is an open-access publication under a Creative Commons Attribution CC BY-NC-ND copyright license, excluding all logos and other material where indicated.
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