Stephanie R. Vierow-Fields

By Judy Dobie, Youth Services STEAM Coordinator, South Fayette Twp Library Facilitators – Judy Dobies -Youth Service STEAM Coordinator & Nicole Harding, Librarian – Youth Services Coordinator The Pinwheel Galaxy is a spiral-shaped galaxy about 21 million light years away from Earth. But on the night of February 15th, 2022, in South Fayette Township, a suburb of Pittsburgh, PA, a library room of interested elementary school-age children were busy creating and spinning their spiral-shaped galaxy pinwheels.  The rotation of the children’s models resembled the Olympic ice-skating athletes in the Beijing Winter Olympics. This activity was just the beginning of a “stellar” evening of [...]

by Susan Borders, Darby Free Public Library, PA On Friday, March 11, 2020, at 3 pm, I received a call from my Board President.  He gave the following directions, “Close the Library at 5 pm. We don’t know when we will reopen.” COVID-19 had arrived in Darby Borough and we were to shelter in place. The Darby Library Board of Directors were kind enough to keep paying the staff. The dedicated staff had issues with doing nothing. Within a week, we were sneaking back into the Library. Like the shoemaker’s elves working in secret, everything became clean, and organized. We missed [...]

By Kevin Tolley, Solano County Library  When thinking about finding volunteers for STEM programming, there are two kinds of groups to consider: Subject Matter Experts (SME) and non-experts (who I’ll just refer to as volunteers). The SME’s are particularly helpful and since I didn't have a lot of STEM expertise in our library staff I did a lot with them during NASA@ My Library 1.0. That meant I leaned on the SME’s for expert knowledge in order to bring quality programming to the library. Finding them was just a matter of persistence. Volunteers, on the other hand, are a bit more [...]

The Space Science Institute is pleased to announce a new exhibit opportunity for public libraries. 'From Our Town to the Moon, Mars and Beyond' will launch in March 2022, traveling to 8 libraries across the country. All public and tribal libraries are welcome to apply. The application will open on September 15th, and will close November 15th  The exhibit, kits, and activities will focus on the path towards a permanent presence on the Moon, the International Space Station as the micro-gravity laboratory, and current and future missions to Mars. Exhibit themes include the differences and similarities between Earth, the Moon, and Mars, how we're getting [...]

Request a virtual chat with NASA’s Artemis Team!!  Artemis Program engineers, managers and communicators are available for a limited number of virtual events during the months of June, July, August and September. You may request a private virtual chat for an in person/virtual summer program or a publicly streamed event on your institution’s Facebook or YouTube page.   The virtual chats must take place Monday – Friday during business hours, 9:00-5:00 Central.  Each live event may last up to 60 minutes and are perfect for summer camps and special events. Virtual Events are limited to one per institution and must have [...]

2020 has not been the year anyone expected. In the first three months of the new year businesses were shuttered, schools closed, millions unemployed, and for libraries across the country, in-person programming ended. Community leaders at libraries and other organizations felt a desperate need to impact their communities in a relevant way. Libraries acknowledged the digital divide - moving WIFI routers to the front of their buildings for patrons in the parking lot, and even checking out WIFI hotspots. To continue programming, some libraries added Take & Make kits to food bank parcels. Others hosted virtual story-time through newly developed Facebook [...]