Literati Book Fairs are expanding in the Mid-Atlantic region; Scholastic and Little Free Library announce "Dog Man" boxes; and more in News Bites.

Literati to expand book fairs

Literati Book Fairs has announced an expansion into the Mid-Atlantic region, offering book fairs to Pre-K–8 in select areas of Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Washington, DC, and West Virginia, starting in the 2024–2025 school year.

Literati Book Fairs launched in March 2022 and is the second-largest book fair provider. They currently operate in more than 30 states.

In addition to traditional book fairs, Literati recently launched Literati Classrooms, an e-commerce platform that enables parents and families to order books and contributes to classroom fundraising. Schools can earn additional funds if a student joins the Literati book club, a monthly delivery service.

Coming soon: "Dog Man" Little Free Libraries

Scholastic and the Little Free Library announced a “Power Up with Reading” initiative to grant “Dog Man”–themed Little Free Library boxes to sites in all 50 states. The project is part of Little Free Library’s “Impact Library” program, which focuses on placing book exchanges in under-resourced communities. “Dog Man” author and illustrator Dav Pilkey will donate 50,000 books to the project.

Each Dog Man Little Free Library box will include free copies of Dog Man: The Scarlet Shedder, as well as titles from Scholastic’s “The Power of Story'' collection, which aims to highlight books featuring diverse characters and stories.

The first Dog Man Little Free Library will be unveiled at a school in Pilkey’s hometown of Cleveland, OH, on March 19—the publication date of Dog Man: The Scarlet Shedder. Additional Dog Man Little Free Library installations are planned for Washington, DC, New York City, Atlanta, Baltimore, Detroit, Houston, New Orleans, Phoenix, Portland, Madison, and San Francisco, with more cities to be announced.

ISTE and ASCD combine conferences

Beginning next year, ISTELive and ASCD annual conferences will be co-locating. Registering to attend either ISTELive or the ASCD Annual conference will automatically grant registrants access to both conference programs.

The first dual event will be June 29 to July 2, 2025, in San Antonio, TX. This year’s conferences will remain as scheduled, with the ASCD Annual Conference in Washington, DC later this month and at ISTELive in Denver in June.

OverDrive and Storytel to offer audiobooks

OverDrive announced a global distribution agreement with Storytel that will offer access to a selection of tens of thousands of audiobooks in 20 languages to all 92,000 libraries and schools in the OverDrive network, making the catalog available to millions of readers.

ALA announces funds to increase accessibility

The American Library Association (ALA) announced that it has received $10 million in support of its Libraries Transforming Communities (LTC) initiative. The majority of the funding, $7 million, will be distributed in grants of $10,000 and $20,000 to small and rural libraries to increase the accessibility of facilities, services, and programs to better serve people with disabilities.

In collaboration with the Association for Rural & Small Libraries, LTC offers grants to qualifying libraries across the country with a population under 25,000 and located at least five miles from an urbanized area.

Apply for the John Cotton Dana Award

ALA is now accepting submissions for the 2024 John Cotton Dana (JCD) Award. The $10,000 award honors outstanding library public relations and will be given to up to eight libraries.

Libraries of all types and sizes are encouraged to submit entries for a John Cotton Dana Award. Entries may be submitted by any library, friends group, consulting agency, or service provider unless they are represented on the JCD committee.

Entries should highlight a strategic communications campaign from the past year. Examples of past campaigns have included rebranding efforts, promotion of archives and special collections, awareness campaigns, community partnerships, and special events. Entries highlighting innovation in marketing and new technologies while sharing what it is you set out to achieve combine all the successful components of winning campaigns.

Deadline for submission is April 24.

Museum story times

The Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City will now host monthly story times for children as a way to make up for the story times lost when New York City libraries were forced to close on Sundays because of budget cuts.

With funding from the Art Bridges Foundation, the Whitney is paying NYC public library staff to run the story times, according to the New York Times.