Episode 708: Citizen Science

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Welcome to Reading With Libraries!
Thank you for joining us on this season of our Reader’s Advisory book group podcast! It’s always better when you are here with us to talk about books. We have more genres to discuss, new books to recommend, and we’re so glad you’re here to join us. We always enjoy our book group podcast, and we hope you do, too! 

This week we are looking at another fun area of work in libraries: citizen science! You could bring in citizen science programs, use it to connect your materials to STEM work in different classes in your school, and of course you can just enjoy some science books! We have a special Guest Host this week: Caroline Nickerson. She is the Senior Program Director at SciStarter. 

Our organization is the Central Minnesota Libraries Exchange. At CMLE, we work with all types of libraries. We started this podcast to provide information for our library community doing Reader’s Advisory work. It’s hard to be an expert on ALL of the great books out there! So we pick a new genre each week to chat about and hopefully provide you with some insight into what may be an unfamiliar genre!  

Beverages:

Each week we like to connect the theme of our books with our beverages. This is a book group, so of course we want you to enjoy a beverage with our chat today. You can find links to the recipes for the beverages we are sharing today on our show notes page; or feel free to just sip along with any beverage you are enjoying!

Today’s beverages come from the Science of Cocktails annual events at the Exploratorium in San Francisco. We are enjoying a few, but there are a lot of fun recipes for you to enjoy!

        Crank It to 11

        Ingredients:

        1 small pile hickory wood chips

        1.5 oz. Blackened American Whiskey

        0.25 oz. Filthy Black Cherry syrup

        4 dashes Bittercube Cherry Bark Vanilla Bitters

        1 Filthy Black Cherry    

        Instructions:

        Place the pile of wood chips on a nonflammable surface and use a torch or long match to light them. Immediately place a rocks glass inverted over them to trap the smoke. Set the smoked glass right-side up on top of a speaker. Add the whiskey, cherry syrup, bitters, and 1/2 oz water to the glass, then play loud music—using the bass to start the incorporation of the drink—through the speaker for 20–30 seconds. Place a large ice cube in the glass and stir for 5 seconds. Add the cherry to the drink and serve.    

        Fibonacci on the Fritz

        Ingredients:

        2 oz. Balcones Baby Blue whiskey

        1 oz. Shaker & Spoon cardamom-apple-maple syrup

        0.25 oz. lemon juice

        0.25 oz. orange juice

        3 dashes black walnut bitters    

        Instructions:

        Add all the ingredients to a shaker. Fill the shaker with ice cubes and shake vigorously until it’s ice-cold and shows frost on the outside (15–30 seconds). Double-strain the shaker’s contents into a chilled coupe (without ice), and serve.    

        Galactic Infusion

        Ingredients:

        1 oz. Tanqueray Nº TEN

        2–3 pieces of freeze-dried fruit/herbs

        Soda water, tonic, or ginger ale    

        Instructions:

        Add freeze dried fruit/herbs to Tanqueray Nº TEN. Seal jar, place in vacuum sealer, remove from sealer, shake, add ice and top with desired mixer.    

Genre Discussion:

We are big fans of citizen science! Our Guest Host’s organization, SciStarter, defines it this way: “Citizen science is collaborative research done by everyday people, anytime, anywhere, to help answer questions scientists can’t answer alone.”

“A citizen science project can involve one person or millions of people collaborating towards a common goal. Typically, public involvement is in data collection, analysis or reporting.

Here are four common features of citizen science practice: 

(a) anyone can participate, 

(b) participants use the same protocol so data can be combined and be high quality, 

(c) data can help real scientists come to real conclusions and 

(d) a wide community of scientists and volunteers work together and share data to which the public, as well as scientists, have access. 

The fields that citizen science advances are diverse: ecology, astronomy, medicine, computer science, statistics, psychology, genetics, engineering and many more. The massive collaborations that can occur through citizen science allow investigations at continental and global scales and across decades—leading to discoveries that a single scientist could never achieve on their own.”

Many of our book group members are working in libraries, and adding in citizen science projects to your library can help you to provide some great service to your community members. Our job in libraries is to connect people to information, and doing this with STEM projects can be fun for all of us, as well as educational!

SciStarter resources:

Suggested Reading Resources:

Our Book Discussion

We have our beverages, we are familiar with this week’s genre, let’s get to the discussion! As always, any book titles we share today will be listed on our show notes page for your convenience. We will give links on each title to Amazon.com, so you can get more information about the books. While you are there, if you buy anything at all – including books – Amazon will give us a small percentage of their profits on that sale. We won’t know it’s you, as it’s anonymous; but we really appreciate your support!

The Field Guide to Citizen Science: How You Can Contribute to Scientific Research and Make a Difference, by Darlene Cavalier, Catherine Hoffman, and Caren Cooper 

A few kid STEM books:

Conclusion:

Thank you so much for joining us on Reading With Libraries! It’s always better when you are here with us, enjoying the book group.

Special thanks to our Guest Host, Caroline. It was great to hear about all of your citizen science resources!

Join us next Thursday with another genre, more guest hosts for our book group, and more books to share and discuss. Be sure to subscribe to our podcast so you don’t miss a single episode! And if you want to hear more about the work we do in libraries or expand your library skills, check out our podcast Linking Our Libraries!

Bring your book ideas, bring your beverages, and join us back here on Thursday!