East Tennessee State University

East Tennessee State University will partner with the School of Library and Information Studies at the University of Alabama to create and evaluate an online professional learning program, Libraries Count, for library staff to integrate math into programming for young children and their families. Project activities will include co-developing the program with key stakeholders from a culturally-responsive, strengths-based perspective in diverse settings; piloting, evaluating, and iteratively improving the program; rolling out and evaluating the impacts of the program at scale through WebJunction across the pilot and additional states; and publishing the final program on WebJunction for libraries to access for free and disseminating the results through the Association of Rural and Small Libraries (ARSL), the Collaborative Summer Library Program, ConnectedLib, Young Mathematicians, and other collaborators. As a subrecipient, the University of Alabama will lead the portions of the project that involve connecting with libraries, resolving issues related to libraries and families in rural settings, and library training.