Brain Breaks @ Your Library: Read

Humans of New York began as a photography project in 2010. The initial goal was to photograph 10,000 New Yorkers on the street, and create an exhaustive catalogue of the city’s inhabitants. Taken together, these portraits and captions became the subject of a vibrant blog. HONY now has over twenty million followers on social media, and provides a worldwide audience with daily glimpses into the lives of strangers on the streets of New York City.

Electric Literature is a nonprofit digital publisher with the mission to make literature more exciting, relevant, and inclusive. We are committed to publishing work that is intelligent and unpretentious, elevating new voices, and examining how literature and storytelling can help illuminate social justice issues and current events. They are interested in writing that operates at the intersection of different cultures, genres, and media. Read essays online for free on their website!

Short Fiction Break is an innovative online literary magazine for people who love reading and writing fiction. In under 2,500 words, these 5-10 minute reads can be great for breaks in your day!

An activity often reserved for children, coloring books for adults rose from hipster trend to global phenomenon beginning in 2013. Adults flocked to the activity for a variety of reasons, including stress relief, socialization, a way to unplug from technology or even as a way to gain social status by appearing trendy.... Capitalizing on the growing adult coloring trend and local interest, Criss Library held several events entitled “Color Me Calm” during the 2015-2016 academic year, both independently and during an campus-wide event known as “De-Stress Fest.” A brief history of the adult coloring trend, the organization, and assessment of the events are shared as well as campus partnerships that were formed and recommendations for future events.

The Mindful Librarian: Connecting the Practice of Mindfulness to Librarianship explores mindfulness, approaching it in such a way as to relate specifically to the many roles or challenges librarians face. Coinciding with the increased need to juggle a variety of tasks, technologies, e-books, and databases, the new Association of College & Research Libraries Framework for Information Literacy, and the challenges faced by solo librarians in school libraries which have suffered cutbacks in help in recent years, the time is exactly right for this publication. The authors hope to be helpful in some small way towards improving the joy and quality of life that librarians and library science students experience in their personal lives and jobs.