Healthy Habits - Schedule

Stressed out? Notice you are taking more sick days than usual or have less enthusiasm or energy than normal? Whether you are knotted up over work, the impending holidays, climate change, or politics, it seems like there are plenty of reasons to feel overwhelmed. Join library director, yoga teacher, and physical literacy researcher, Jenn Carson, as she teaches you how to de-stress at your desk, maintain proper posture, avoid injury, and regulate your emotions through breathing, stretching, and other techniques. Participants will learn an easy self-care routine that will help to reduce stress at work and leave you feeling recharged instead of drained. As a participants, you will leave with digital downloads to help you remember what you learned and share with your colleagues.

Like many other education institutions, it has been noticed that the stress level of our students increases during finals week. We have tried several ways to lower their stress level including a very popular coloring table, free coffee, and mindfulness sessions. We started with a long, more intensive mindfulness session, co-facilitated by myself and one of the English Faculty who is a Buddhist monk. Although a satisfying experience, I wanted to experiment with a less intense approach that was shorter and more casual. This was promoted to our students as a "Ten Minute mindfulness break" with the added allure of a video, green tea, and brownies. The goal was to teach about mindfulness, engage the students, and reduce their stress. The great success of this program has led us to continue it in this coming semester.

Free government electronic resources can provide you and your community with trustworthy health and wellness information. Two Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP) coordinators, Marna Morland from Eugene McDermott Library at the University of Texas at Dallas and Paige Shank from J. Eric Jonsson Central Library at the Dallas Public Library, will highlight the “best of the best” of individual documents, websites, mobile apps, and databases on the topic. You will be amazed at the variety and amount of free resources available for people of all ages!

A few years ago, the Kent District Library in Grand Rapids, Michigan, hired Calli Crow to be their Volunteer Coordinator. Calli had never worked in libraries before and her passion was increasing access to bicycling. In her new role, Calli spear-headed the BikeKDL initiative, a system-wide team at the library "committed to cycling as recreation and transportation" (https://www.kdl.org/bikekdl). In Columbia, South Carolina, the Richland Library became the first ever winner of the ALA Presidential Citation for Wellness in the Workplace for, among other things, making bicycles available to staff so that they didn't always have to jump in their car every time they had to get to a meeting (http://www.ala.org/news/member-news/2019/06/richland-library-first-recei...). Embracing bicycling culture in your library can transform the health of your staff, of your patrons, and of your wider community. This session focuses on how you can step up to support bicycling in your community. We'll go over how to get started, focusing on how to identify and work with common partners (police departments for bike rodeos, bike shops for bike maintenance demos, public health departments for bike shares, etc.) and how to strategically plan your efforts. After making sure your bike racks are safe and up-to-date, then your library can think about implementing brand new or programs that have been done by libraries across the U.S. such as: having a few loaner bike locks available, raffling some bikes as summer reading prizes, starting a book bike, bike share, a series of bike maintenance classes, and even organizing a bike tour of local historical sites. This sessions gives you the info you need to get started.

Research has shown college students are susceptible to burnout as a result of too much digital technology use and that higher digital technology usage is correlated with lower GPA. Librarians can play a pivotal role in teaching students how to periodically "unplug" from the digital world in order to improve their academic performance. This webinar will highlight the development of a "digital wellness" program within one academic library's existing framework of educational offerings (i.e., stand-alone graduate workshops on the topic, a module for undergraduate information literacy courses).

Libraries are not only a space, but a service. Like healthcare, the past twenty years has drastically changed the library landscape. Since the digitization of libraries, library patrons have evolved into increasingly more virtual users, utilizing digital resources and databases. Librarians have responded to this new development by leaving the library to meet users where they are, ultimately bringing them to the physical library space.
As a newly Magnet designated hospital, NYP Westchester Division nurses are taking steps to further increase their involvement in evidence based practice (EBP) and research. The library is one of the major stakeholders for promoting EBP and research. My role as Medical Librarian is to engage staff, and to educate them on how to utilize the many resources and databases NYP has to offer.

Due to the demands of working on a unit, it can be challenging for nurses to visit the library and take advantage of the services. With this in mind, medical library services include unit based education. A brief presentation was created to introduce the resources of the Weill Cornell Medicine Library, the affiliated academic library for New York-Presbyterian Westchester Division. An invitation was then extended to Patient Care Directors to make this presentation available to their nurses to share information on library services and how to access resources. After only a couple of presentations at unit meetings, there has been an increased interest in research, library resources and utilizing the library space. The library receives more traffic and nurses’ increased access to quality evidence leads to increase nursing excellence.

In addition to offering services to hospital staff members, the library has extended its services to patients. Many patients look for positive distractions, like reading to pass the time. In response to patients' book requests, the Westchester Division Library partnered with the White Plains Public Library. The White Plains Public Library receives many donations, many of which never make it to the library shelves. In order to have these books go to good use, the public library donates these books on a monthly basis to the hospital. The medical library then distributes the donated books to patients on the unit. These books are not lent out, rather they are for the patients to keep.

This course serves as a reminder and reassurance that the library is not an outdated building housing books. Rather, it is both an innovative and dynamic service benefiting both staff and patients. To stay relevant, outreach is now the cornerstone of library services. The 21st century library, though challenged by new technology, is redefining itself and continues to stay relevant to the users it serves.

Imagine grocery shopping for your family at a Dollar Store. That’s the reality for the rural poor who live in food deserts with limited transportation. This lack of access to fresh food directly leads to an increase in obesity, diabetes, and other serious health concerns. The Southern Adirondack Library System (SALS) and the Comfort Food Community food pantry teamed up to address the challenges of food scarcity, food waste, rural food deserts, and transportation by launching the Fresh Food Collective Farm-2-Library Distribution initiative in the summer of 2018. We reduced food waste by gleaning produce from local farms, then distributing the produce through three small, rural libraries (Schuylerville Public Library, Whitehall Free Library, and Pember Library and Museum) where food scarcity, limited food pantry access, and transportation all limit access to fresh fruits and vegetables. The pilot year ran from July – October 2018. In those four months, nearly 2,500 pounds of fresh produce were distributed, bringing new faces into the library, creating and deepening relationships with the community fostering renewed interest in library services from populations that were previously reluctant users. The results of the initiative exceeded the expectations of our community partner, Comfort Food Community leading to the doubling of initial once-a-week deliveries and our current pilot program that will provide year-round produce delivery to the Schuylerville Public Library. Find out how we made it happen, and what we learned.

This joint session with Heather Seibert and Amanda Vinogradov will outline and describe the steps they took as well as the research used to help bring about institutional change at East Carolina University in respect to lactation accommodations. They began working for this change in 2013 when they identified the need for lactation accommodations in Joyner Library upon returning to work after having children. Through research, presentations and on campus advocacy they were able to develop an official lactation committee for the University, create multiple lactation rooms on campus, take part in the development of a Human Resource Lactation Accommodation policy, and see various awards won for the lactation rooms on both the main and medical campus. This initiative was sparked due to the recognition of the need for support and wellness of those needing lactation accommodations on campus. Seibert and Vinogradov continued their advocacy by co-editing an anthology, published through ALA, on the importance and need for library workplace change to support employees.

You’re a library worker. You already know how to help those in your community find health information. But...what are you doing to manage your own well-being? Individual and community well-being are inherently connected. Thus, it is critical that workplaces be areas of wellness for their employees. If you are a supervisor, its important you ask yourself, "How am I helping to ensure my staff stays healthy (physically, emotionally, etc.)?" Join us to discover practical ways to improve your own personal well-being. We will also discuss ways to increase overall wellness for all staff in libraries to ensure have happy, healthy and safe work environments.

Healthy Communities is a partnership that began in 2018 between the Free Library of Philadelphia’s Culinary Literacy Center and the Philadelphia Department of Public Health’s Get Healthy Philly initiative. This partnership increases the library’s capacity to offer free health and wellness workshops ranging from African-diaspora inspired cooking to strength training to gardening.

In October 2018, Community Chef Training was offered at Lillian Marrero Library in the Fairhill section of North Philadelphia. This free, four-day workshop equipped a cohort of community members with the skills and certifications to lead low-cost, culturally diverse culinary demos. Due to their welcomed success, the Community Chef Trainees will continue to lead cooking demonstrations at neighborhood libraries.

This session will provide an overview of the partnership that the Hesburgh Libraries has developed with the University’s Center for Student Well-Being. Programs designed for student well-being include hosting Counseling Center “Let’s Talk” sessions in the Libraries, establishing a regular schedule for “Health Hut” visits, and providing space for relaxation and naps during stressful times of year. Additionally, the Center for Student Well-Being invited the Libraries to participate in a “Healthy Campus Coalition grant funded by the American College Health Association. This grant provided funds to host regular meetings designed to raise awareness of wellness activities happening throughout campus. One of the presenters at a Healthy Campus Coalition meeting presented her research on the importance of compassion, and as a result, she was invited to speak to a library department about the profoundly positive impact compassion can have on providers, recipients, and witnesses of acts of compassion. The presentation was designed to raise awareness of the importance of compassion, and it was timed to happen right before finals, and a few months before a staff retirement incentive program was scheduled to begin. No direct study of the results of the presentation have been done, however, anecdotal evidence strongly indicated that attendees were appreciative and learned from the presentation.

In May of 2019, Durland Alternatives partnered with local doctor and movement specialist, Melissa Miller and the Tompkins County Public Library in Ithaca, New York to create a movement-based book club. The 10 participants met weekly for 1.5 hours to discuss Katy Bowman's Move Your DNA and experience the movement exercises described in the book. All of the spots were filled on the first day of registration, including a diverse group of participants of various abilities and backgrounds. Due to the wildly successful pilot, the program will be ran again August of 2019. Best of all, the books are part of a book kit that any patron can borrow and use for their own club. This session will shed light on what worked for us and how you can gain consultation in running your own program or even hiring outside help.

Decatur Public Library, a small library in a rural Texas county, partnered with multiple local organizations and the National Network of Libraries of Medicine to create a summer reading program that incorporates both a reading challenge and a healthy activity challenge. With the aid of a Community Health grant from NNLM, the program offered everything from zumba and yoga classes for all ages to STEM and leadership camps for children and teens. Participants received incentives each time they completed a health or a reading challenge, with extra recognition for those who completed both.