88tal Health and Well-Being Resources in North Country Libraries

The 88tal Health and Well-Being Resources project is designed to increase health literacy and mental health awareness in the North Country Library System, a mostly 95 geographic area that consists of four counties in northern New York. The project has two components. The first component consists of increasing the amount of mental health training and resources for library staff and patrons by purchasing online Homeless Librarian training, hosting an Effective Skills for Emotional Wellness training and adding mental health ebooks and audio-books to the NCLS Overdrive collection. The Homeless Librarian training will equip library staff and trustees with the skills needed to interact with library patrons who are experiencing homelessness, mental illness and trauma. The Emotional Wellness training will help library staff manage their stress, mitigate depressive symptoms and relieve anxiety so they can better serve their patrons, staff and families. The purchase of 88tal Health ebooks and audiobooks will allow patrons to have access to free mental health titles that they didnt have access to before. The second part of the project will focus on promoting digital health resources throughout the North Country Library System. Medline Plus and other free online health resources will be promoted though a digital campaign website and social media as well through print media such as banners and bookmarks. The NCLS Outreach Coordinator will design and purchase these materials in mass and then distribute them to the member libraries to use in their buildings. In order to effectively promote the resources, The NCLS Outreach Coordinator will also host a series of webinar trainings that highlight the online health resources for member library staff. The training will be conducted through webinars by NNLM staff. This will help insure that staff are familiar with the resources so that they can actively promote them to their patrons. In addition to this, the Outreach Coordinator will develop an expertise of the online health resources provided by the NNLM through archived and scheduled webinars and will participate in future trainings to help sustain the project and effectively promote the resources after the initial grant-funded project year. This individual will also confer with the local county health departments and the local hospital librarian to get a better sense of what the local health issues are. This information will be used to plan and focus future health resource promotion to fit local needs.