About: The Libraries and Veterans National Forum was born out of efforts from librarians at the Texas A&M University Libraries and their desire to better learn from others libraries' efforts to support the veteran and military communities. Collaborating with librarians from academic, public, school, state, and VA libraries, the Libraries and Veterans National Forum project team gathered 250 librarians engaging in this work to share their success stories, brainstorm solutions to their challenges, and gain new ideas to bring back to their libraries. The online Forum took place during the Fall of 2021, and recordings of the Forum sessions will be made available on this site Librarians across the U.S. also had the opportunity to apply for microgrants that could seed veterans’ programming at their local libraries.
In an effort to help librarians just getting started working with veterans, as well as those looking for new ideas to bring to their libraries, an online toolkit was created to collect the shared knowledge of librarians working with the veteran community. It contains lesson plans, program outlines, collection development policies, best practice documents, and more to help ease the way for those just getting started in this work - and to make it easier for those already engaged to find new ideas and new strategies to increase the success of their programs.
This project was made possible in part by the Institute of Museum and Library Services and the New Hampshire State Library.