Space Science at a National
Library Conference

Paul Dusenbery, Anne Holland, Keliann LaConte, and Brooks Mitchell brought interactive science and technology learning experiences to the American Library Association Annual Conference in Chicago, IL, June 23-26, 2017.

As members of the NASA booth in the exhibit hall, the NCIL team presented about science background and resources for the upcoming solar eclipse, showcased hands-on activities, and demonstrated the new SciGames app, Solar Vision. The NCIL team also presented two sessions, Daytime Astronomy at Your Library and -- in collaboration with leaders in the library and museum community and other NASA SMD-funded teams -- High-impact STEM Events to Foster Collaboration.

Attendance at the ALA Annual Conference can reach over 22,000 public, academic, and school library professionals and exhibitors, making this conference a key part of NCIL's efforts to support STEM learning in libraries.

View NASA's Photo Gallery

The STAR_Net team is proud to partner with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s Universe of Learning program to offer an innovative exhibit program to public libraries and their partners, starting in the summer of 2018.

Please help us make the exhibit a perfect fit for your library by completing this survey for the project team. Your responses are integral to creating a quality program for libraries and their communities. The survey will be open through August 15th. 

Date: Wednesday, August 2nd, 2017
Time: 3pm EDT / 2pm CDT / 1pm MDT / 12pm PT

Join NCIL Staff and Doug Duncan, Director of the Fiske Planetarium at UC Boulder, to learn about ways to safely view the 2017 Great American Eclipse.

Note: There are only a few opening left so reserve your space now! If you have already registered and are now not able to make the live webinar, please consider removing your registration so others can attend in your place. If you need assistance removing your registration, please contact Brooks at bmitchell@spacescience.org and he can make that happen for you. Thank you!

For those that are unable to attend the live webinar, we will have a recording posted on our website within a day or two after the live presentation.

Note: We are switching to a new webinar platform so
our registration process may be different than before.

ALA Expands Program to Help
Libraries get "Ready to Code"

ALA has announced a competitive grant program, sponsored by Google, that will fund a cohort of 25-50 school and public libraries to design computational thinking and computer science programs for and with youth, including under-represented youth. The grant application will open in late July.  If you’d like to get notification when the application is open, sign up via this online form. 

Learn More!

Facebook Page Hits Milestone

Over this past weekend we jumped past the 1,000 page likes milestone on our Facebook page! We want to thank our outstanding online community for following us and sharing our content and hope you are finding it informative and useful.

We are already looking forward to increasing our reach to the many addtional libraries and their staff who have an interest in implementing STEM programming within their communities.

Hands-on STEM: Dunking the Planets

With the end of NASA’s Cassini mission approaching, now is a good time to build interest and excitement about the planet that Cassini has spent so much time orbiting: Saturn! In this activity, participants dunk scale models of the planets, represented by fruits and other foods, in water to highlight the fact that density is different from mass. They will be surprised to learn that the second largest planet in our solar system isn’t very dense and could even float in water!

Check out the activity and make sure to leave a review!