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Penn State University Libraries, through its LibWell Initiative and sensory rooms pilot program, has received national recognition from the American Library Association (ALA) in its State of America’s Libraries 2024 report. Issued annually by ALA during National Library Week, the report informs the public about important trends and prominent issues facing American libraries today.

Thavolia Glymph will present three Brose Distinguished Lectures April 18-20 in Paterno Library's Foster Auditorium on the Penn State University Park campus. All three presentations are free and open to the public.

Penn State Libraries’ Open Publishing program has launched the online “Bibliography of Library History, 1990–2022.” Published semi-annually since 1990, the bibliography is a long-running effort to help library historians identify the latest books, articles, chapters and dissertations in the field of library history, with an emphasis on North American and European scholarship.

Applications are now open for the next Blended Learning Transformation workshop series, open to faculty, instructors and lecturers from all Penn State campuses who are interested in learning how to incorporate remote and online teaching experiences and various technology tools into face-to-face courses. 

Penn State’s Open Education Engagement Series, offered online by Penn State University Libraries, is a series of interactive sessions on topics related to open educational resources (OER). The spring 2024 series focuses on OER technologies and University resources and support available to instructors and staff interested in learning more about OER.

Political Song-a-Palooza, a musical showcase sponsored by Penn State University Libraries and featuring new, old, and original political or protest music, takes place at 8 p.m. Saturday, April 20 at the State Theatre in downtown State College.

Penn State University Libraries has opened the application for the 2024–25 OER Leads Faculty Adoption Grants. These grants give faculty the opportunity to customize their courses to adopt open educational resources (OER), thus ensuring their students have free and ongoing access to their course materials. The application deadline is April 20.

Children’s author and poet Janet Wong will visit Penn State Harrisburg on Tuesday, April 16. Wong will present workshops on writing and teaching poetry at 9 a.m., noon and 6 p.m. in the Hanes Library’s Morrison Gallery on campus.

Essayist, poet and Penn State alumna Christine Hume will offer a reading as part of this year’s Mary E. Rolling Reading Series. The reading, which is free and open to the public, will take place at 6 p.m. Thursday, April 11, in Paterno Library’s Foster Auditorium on the University Park campus.

Since ancient times, the camera obscura was used to safely observe solar eclipses without risk of damaging the eyes by looking directly into the sun. In “My Dark Room: Spaces of the Inner Self in Eighteenth-Century England,” Julie Park, Paterno Family Librarian for Literature, Penn State University Libraries, and professor of English at Penn State, explains that it also is a pivotal paradigm for the experience of introspection in daily life.

Emily Reed, reference and instruction librarian at Madlyn L. Hanes Library, Penn State Harrisburg, received the 2024 Advancing a Global Penn State: Early Career Faculty Award from Penn State Global. The Early Career Faculty Award is one of eight awards presented annually by Penn State Global to recognize the outstanding contributions of individuals and academic units across the University, including the Commonwealth Campuses, that have helped to advance Penn State’s global engagement goals.

Penn State’s Teaching and Learning with Technology is accepting applications through April 19 for the 2024-25 Faculty Engagement Awards. This year’s theme is “Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) for Teaching.” 

Joseph T. Yun, artificial intelligence (AI) and innovation architect for the University of Pittsburgh, will lead sessions on AI in teaching and learning over two days in April as part of Penn State Teaching and Learning with Technology's Dreamery Speaker Series.

Several Penn State campuses are celebrating Campus Pride Month throughout April with events offered by the Center for Sexual and Gender Diversity and other units across the University.

Penn State University Libraries will host the traveling exhibition “Out on Campus: A History of LGBTQ+ Activism at Pennsylvania Colleges and Universities” April 13-26 at the University Park campus to coincide with Penn State’s Pride Month. “Out on Campus” is the third traveling exhibition by Barry Loveland, chair of the LGBT Center of Central PA History Project.

The 2024 winner of the Lee Bennett Hopkins Poetry Award, jointly administered by the Pennsylvania Center for the Book and Penn State University Libraries, is “Welcome to the Wonder House.” The book of poetry divides the house into rooms that explore different science, technology, engineering, art and math topics.

Penn State’s Teaching and Learning with Technology (TLT) is accepting self-nominations through April 18 for the 2024-2026 Teaching and Learning Technologies Faculty Advisory Committee. This committee plays a pivotal role in guiding TLT on integrating technology into teaching and learning at Penn State.

Julia Spicher Kasdorf and C.S. Giscombe will offer a free poetry reading and discussion at 6 p.m. on Thursday, March 21, in Paterno Library’s Foster Auditorium on Penn State’s University Park campus.

Penn State Teaching and Learning with Technology has worked since 2009 alongside 55 diverse Faculty Fellows on projects at the intersection of pedagogy and technology. The window to apply for the next cohort is open and proposals will be accepted until Friday, April 19.

Penn State University Libraries has signed a two-year pilot "Read and Publish" agreement with Taylor and Francis Group, a publisher of peer-reviewed academic books and journals. Under this agreement, Penn State corresponding authors’ accepted articles will be open access if they choose the "open publishing" option, including the retroactive conversion terms for articles accepted on or after Jan. 1, 2024.