Getting Started with Citizen Science Kits at Your Library

Interested in introducing Citizen Science into your library’s programming and circulating collection, but don’t know where to start?

Join partners from the Public Library of Brookline and the Hamden Public Library to hear how they introduced CO2 monitoring Citizen Kits into their circulating collection. Panelists will discuss why they pursued these programs, how they catalogued the kits and introduced them to their communities, as well as lessons learned and what other libraries should know if they’re interested in pursuing a similar project.

Kate Nyhan is a public health librarian and lecturer in environmental health at Yale University. Her work includes evidence synthesis methods, evidence-based public health, and the information behavior of the public health workforce outside of academia. Kate co-founded the non-profit organization Community Access to Ventilation Information to help Canadian public libraries empower community members to measure and improve indoor air quality with CO2 monitors. In its first two years, CAVI gave 300 CO2 monitors to public library systems serving 30% of the Canadian population, across nine provinces and two languages. This work unites Kate’s passions for health equity, information, and libraries. 

Ryan Brennan is currently the Interim  Assistant Director for the Public Library of Brookline, previously serving as the Supervisor of Collection Development. Ryan has worked in public libraries for 15 years in various roles including public programming, collections and administration. Most recently he's been working with Library of Things and tool library collections as well as auditing the library's collection diversity. This project aligns well with that work and Ryan's passion for bringing equitable access to information and resources to the community. 

If someone told Melissa Canhamclyne's elementary school self that she would grow up to be a library director, she would not have laughed loudly! Journalism, teaching, pursuing medicine - these were all careers she worked in or pursued. Then, she volunteered at her branch library in New Haven, CT and quickly learned that a library is a hospital for the soul and that all her previous career pursuits prepared her to serve in a public library. Gratefully since 2001, she has been mentored and nurtured by awesome folks and has grown her career in library land from page to library director. Along the way she has helped to steward urban, rural, and suburban libraries in Connecticut. Currently, she is the library director for the Hamden Public Library system.

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