We are big fans of VR! Starting this year we have several VR/AR kits we are loaning to our school libraries, complete with lesson plans they can use to connect classes with all kinds of great resources.

Sure, it’s fun to play with these. But virtual and augmented reality is playing an increasingly important role in a lot of other areas. We are going to look at a different use each week, so you can work with your community members to help them learn about the great things possible for them today, and tomorrow.

Everyone has had nightmares. And when they become a consistent pattern, they can be a real problem. One strategy for handling all kinds of fears is approaching the fearful images in a new environment and working to make them less scary.

This article talks about a study to help give people who have frequent nightmares the opportunity to confront scary images, and to be able to take control of them. It seems like an interesting use of VR tech!

Read through our excerpt below, and click to get the entire thing!

“You keep having this recurring nightmare of a shark chasing you underwater. Its glassy black eyes track your flailing escape, but its terrifying rows of hungry teeth loom larger and larger as the nightmare continues. You see those sharp teeth up close before you jolt awake, covered in sweat and shaking with the aftershocks of what you just witnessed. Again.

But what if that shark’s mouth was replaced by a cartoonish smile? That’s where virtual reality comes in with the recent work of Patrick McNamara, a Boston University School of Medicine associate professor of neurology. Earlier this year, he and his team invited 19 study participants who said they have frequent nightmares. Using joystick and gesture controls, they could modify the threatening visuals to make them less frightening, such as using a drawing tool to cover up the shark’s teeth or a sizing tool to shrink the mouth down. Later, participants were asked to write a narrative about their newly edited visual experience.

This approach to using image rehearsal therapy, a common method of helping nightmare sufferers confront the source of their fear, resulted in “a significant reduction (from baseline to trial end) in anxiety levels, nightmare distress, and nightmare effects,” as his paper states in the journal Dreaming.

“If we can teach people to control the scary images they see, that can help them get rid of their nightmares,” McNamara says in an interview. Since VR is such an immersive environment compared to watching images on a flat screen, participants can “redraw those images so they can turn a gun, say, into a flower.””

Really interesting ideas here! More research is ahead for this, and it will be interesting to see how it develops!

I know – we are preaching to the choir here.

You already know that school libraries are important. We know they are important. WHY DOESN’T EVERYONE KNOW THIS ALREADY????

Sigh.

As a profession, no matter where any of us are in this profession, we all need to be more vocal about telling people about the value our library is bringing to our community.

We’ve all see libraries have their funding cut, or just eliminated all together. It happens too often! And it happens way, way too often in school libraries.

Waiting until that announcement happens to start leaping up and screaming about our value? That’s just too late. Those discussions on our value need to happen all the time!

So I was pleased to see this opinion piece in the student-run Geneseo University newspaper, talking about the problems caused not just for an individual school when a library is lost, but for the larger community.

We have an excerpt below, and encourage you to click on their link to get the whole thing!

Decrease of libraries should cause societal panic, especially in impoverished communities

by Maria Pawlak

“…The United States can’t afford to fund libraries, but when they do, they are severely depleted. Though they’ve gone downhill since 1999, the most striking losses were during the years 2009-2010 and 2013-2014. The first drop can be attributed to the recession of 2008, but the second dip is more pressing, which was caused by a cut in funding, according to a report by Kathy D Tuck and Dwight R. Holmes.

It’s not that schools don’t want to employ librarians, there just simply isn’t money to spend on their salaries. After the financial crisis of 2008, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act was passed and increased funding was provided to programs nationwide, including schools and libraries. In 2011, however, funding was cut and school libraries were forced into even further decline.

In Chicago, for instance, public schools have gone from more than 450 librarians to fewer than 150 librarians in more than 600 schools, all within a four-year period. In Los Angeles Unified, which is made up of more than 1,000 schools, almost half of their librarians have been lost in the past decade, according to Education Week. 

In Florida, the number of librarians employed has dropped 27 percent since 2005, according to an article from 2017 by the Herald Tribune. In New York City, the number of school libraries had dropped more than 50 percent by 2014. A 1974 state law requires middle and high schools in New York to hire librarians in direct proportion to the size of their schools. If complied with, this would force the district to double the number of librarians, which could cost up to $30 million.

One could argue that the funds do exist—they’re merely disappearing to other positions. Nationwide, schools have seen an 11 percent increase in counselors, a 19 percent increase in instructional aides and a whopping 28 percent increase in school administrators. These increases could be coming at the expense of libraries and librarians. The idea presented, that librarians aren’t worth keeping around, is dangerous.

Something that educators and creators of modern education have invested countless amounts of time and money into is standardized testing. According to numerous studies, there’s a direct correlation between librarians existing and students scoring higher on reading and writing tests.

According to a Colorado study, schools that maintained or gained a librarian between 2005 and 2011 had fewer students scoring ‘unsatisfactory’ in reading tests in 2011. Schools with at least one full-time equivalent librarian averaged significantly higher advanced CSAP reading scores than schools with less than one FTE endorsed librarian.”

Check out the rest of this opinion piece here.

And be sure you go tell someone about the value you are providing to your community today!!! Literally, your community is relying on you!

Each week we assemble a collection – a bouquet, if you will – of books you can read for yourself, or use to build into a display in your library. As always, the books we link to have info from Amazon.com. If you click a link and then buy anything at all from Amazon, we get a small percent of their profits from your sale. Yay!!! Thanks!!! We really appreciate the assistance! 💕😊

Okay, yes. I know. It’s a little early to be thinking about snow. But it’s starting to get chilly and dark outside, so pretty soon it’s going to be winter. And all that snow will be landing across Minnesota. So let’s get ready with some snow-themed books! Break out the hot chocolate, wrap up in a warm blanket, and light some candles to bring come cozy hygge to your snowy reading.

The Call of the Wild, by Jack London ” The novel’s central character is a dog named Buck, a domesticated dog living at a ranch in the Santa Clara valley of California as the story opens. Stolen from his home and sold into the brutal existence of an Alaskan sled dog, he reverts to atavistic traits. Buck is forced to adjust to, and survive, cruel treatments and fight to dominate other dogs in a harsh climate. Eventually he sheds the veneer of civilization, relying on primordial instincts and lessons he learns, to emerge as a leader in the wild. “

The Long Winter, by Laura Ingalls Wilder “The adventures of Laura Ingalls and her family continue as Pa, Ma, Laura, Mary, Carrie, and little Grace bravely face the hard winter of 1880-81 in their little house in the Dakota Territory. Blizzards cover the little town with snow, cutting off all supplies from the outside. Soon there is almost no food left, so young Almanzo Wilder and a friend make a dangerous trip across the prairie to find some wheat. Finally a joyous Christmas is celebrated in a very unusual way in this most exciting of all the Little House books. “

Doctor Zhivago, by Boris Pasternak ” It is the story of Zhivago, poet and physician, and his struggle to keep his family alive in the midst of the overwhelming chaos of the Russian Revolution. And, it is about Zhivago’s love for the beautiful Lara, the woman he pursues beyond all reason, the human symbol of life’s sweetness and joy…. “

Snow Falling on Cedars, by David Guterson ” San Piedro Island, north of Puget Sound, is a place so isolated that no one who lives there can afford to make enemies.  But in 1954 a local fisherman is found suspiciously drowned, and a Japanese American named Kabuo Miyamoto is charged with his murder.  In the course of the ensuing trial, it becomes clear that what is at stake is more than a man’s guilt. For on San Pedro, memory grows as thickly as cedar trees and the fields of ripe strawberries–memories of a charmed love affair between a white boy and the Japanese girl who grew up to become Kabuo’s wife; memories of land desired, paid for, and lost. Above all, San Piedro is haunted by the memory of what happened to its Japanese residents during World War II, when an entire community was sent into exile while its neighbors watched.  Gripping, tragic, and densely atmospheric, Snow Falling on Cedars is a masterpiece of suspense– one that leaves us shaken and changed. “

The Terror, by Dan Simmons “The men on board the HMS Terror have every expectation of finding the Northwest Passage. But what they don’t expect is a monstrous predator lurking behind the Arctic ice. When the expedition’s leader, Sir John Franklin, meets a horrifying end, Captain Francis Crozier takes command, leading his surviving crewmen on a last desperate attempt to flee south across the ice. But another winter is rapidly approaching, and with it, scurvy and starvation. Crozier and his men may find that there is no escaping the terror stalking them southward. And with the crushing cold and the fear of almost certain death at their backs, the most horrifying monster among them may be each other. “

A Cold Day for Murder: A Kate Shugak Mystery, by Dana Stabenow “Eighteen months ago, Aleut Kate Shugak quit her job investigating sex crimes for the Anchorage DA’s office and retreated to her father’s homestead in a national park in the interior of Alaska. But the world has a way of beating a path to her door, however remote. In the middle of one of the bitterest Decembers in recent memory ex-boss – and ex-lover – Jack Morgan shows up with an FBI agent in tow. A Park ranger with powerful relatives is missing, and now the investigator Jack sent in to look for him is missing, too.

Reluctantly, Kate, along with Mutt, her half-wolf, half-husky sidekick, leaves her wilderness refuge to follow a frozen trail through the Park, twenty thousand square miles of mountain and tundra sparsely populated with hunters, fishermen, trappers, mushers, pilots and homesteaders. Her formidable grandmother and Native chief, Ekaterina Shugak, is – for reasons of her own – against Kate’s investigation; her cousin, Martin, may be Kate’s prime suspect; and the local trooper, Jim Chopin, is more interested in Kate than in her investigation. In the end, the sanctuary she sought after five and a half years in the urban jungles may prove more lethal than anything she left behind in the city streets of Anchorage.”

You probably know that we run a couple of podcasts here:

• Linking Our Libraries: talking about library skills each week
• Reading With Libraries: podcast book group, with new genres, books, and beverages each week

So, yeah – we are big fans of podcasts! They can be such a good way to share ideas with your community.

Each week we share a podcast about books and/or libraries, so you can join us in expanding podcast community and admiring the work others are doing to share cool info!

This week we are admiring the podcast Book Fight! (Twitter: @Book_Fight)

I listen to this every week, and it’s always interesting!

From their website:

“The Book Fight podcast is, in a nutshell, writers talking about books. Books we love. Books we hate. Books that inspire us, baffle us, infuriate us. These are the conversations writers have at the bar, which is to say they’re both unflinchiningly honest and open to tangents, misdirection, general silliness.

Each episode starts with a particular book, story or essay, chosen either by one of us (Tom or Mike) or by our guest, though you don’t need to read the books to enjoy the show. We promise not to spoil anything too serious, plot-wise, and the books themselves generally serve as jumping-off points for larger discussions about writing and reading: craft issues, the ins and outs of publishing, the contemporary lit scene, such as it is.

We’ve also gotten in the habit of building our short story and essay episodes around seasonal themes, like the Winter of Wayback and Spring of Success. During the first two years of the show, our installments on non-book weeks were called Writers Ask, episodes focused on answering questions from listeners about writing, reading, publishing, MFA programs, and more.”

Here are a few of their recent episodes:

• Episode 297: Magical Realist Stories
• Episode 296: Second Person Stories
• Episode 295: Unreliable Narrators
• Episode 294: Virginia Woolf, To The Lighthouse
• Episode 293: Ford Madox Ford, The Good Soldier