(via Dr. Ruth Small, Syracuse University)
This is a reminder of our final call for your submission of Project ENABLE impact stories, as part of our current IMLS Laura Bush 21st Century Librarian grant. Our deadline for submission has been extended to Sunday, May 1.
The purpose of these impact stories is to demonstrate how even small changes in the way you do your work, select your resources, redesign your spaces, or deliver your programs can have a big impact on how your patrons with disabilities perceive and use your library. Each story describes something that an individual or team of library staff has done to make their library more welcoming and useful to patrons, staff, board and/or visitors with disabilities. By sharing your story, you’re inspiring others to make similar changes in their libraries.
We encourage librarians, support staff (including paraprofessionals, aides, interns, etc.) and administrators who are willing to describe a change you or your team have made, within the past five years, to improve accessibility and inclusion for people with disabilities in your library to submit your story.
We are offering $100 for each story accepted by our selection panel. If accepted, your impact story will be added to our Project ENABLE database, and we may even feature it in our blog or newsletter, PE News. All accepted stories will be added to the nearly 40 wonderful and inspiring stories already in our Resources database, contributed by library staff across the U.S. and around the world.
Each impact story should include (1) your name, email address, the name of your library, and the location of your library; (2) what prompted your idea for change; (3) what that change was and its intended goal; (4) barriers (if any) you faced when making that change; (5) supports (e.g., people, funding) you had (if any) that helped enable that change; and (6) evidence that you achieved your goal through impact, as revealed in an observation, a conversation, etc. of that change for at least one patron with a disability. Each story should be between 300 and 400 words in length.
So, take a peek here to see one or more of the stories already in the collection to get a sense of how they are written. We accept stories from staff from all types of libraries, from any department within a library or from any member of the library staff, including aides and interns. And while you’re there, you might also enjoy looking at some of our “challenge videos”, or printing out some of our “pathfinders” to distribute to staff or patrons, or just browsing the more than 1000 resources.
If you are contemplating offering your own workshop to your staff, check out our four new workshop packages. Each package contains all of the pieces (e.g., presentation scripts, PowerPoint slides, handouts and workshop evaluation forms) that you will need to present a workshop to your staff.
If you have any questions or are ready to submit your impact story, just e-mail Dr. Ruth Small, Director of Project ENABLE, at drruth@syr.edu.