Recommended Online Resources

Betsy Diamant-Cohen and Tess Prendergast

Here are some free resources for children’s librarians who like to browse through research on topics related to our work with children.

The State of America’s Children 2021 State Fact Sheets

https://www.childrensdefense.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/The-State-of-Americas-Children-2021.pdf

Produced by the Children’s Defense Fund, this resource is great for writing a grant or assessing community health in your state, including information about child population, child health, child poverty, early childhood, education, income and wealth inequality, housing and homelessness, child welfare, child hunger and nutrition, youth justice, and gun violence.

Rise Magazine

http://www.risemagazine.org/rise-magazine/

Parent-written Rise Magazine aims to reduce unnecessary family separations and increase the likelihood that children who are placed in foster care quickly and safely return home. Adults share their foster care experiences to support parent advocates and to guide child welfare professionals in becoming more responsive to families and communities.

Child Care and Early Education Research Connections

https://www.researchconnections.org/content/childcare/find/datatools.html

Originally produced by the Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation (OPRE), Administration for Children and Families (ACF), US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), this website contains COVID-19 resources, a research and policy library, a section for searching data and variables, analyzing data, accessing data training resources from the National Survey of Early Care and Education and publishing your own data. It also supplies tools for performing research, such as data collection, accessing research quality, study design and analysis, a child care and early education glossary, a research glossary, and a section on working with administrative data. The final section gives access to federal efforts including research and meetings, policies and programs, training and technical assistance. Their Research Connections newsletter highlights reports from state and local research.

Academia.edu

http://academia.edu/

The mission of Academia.edu is to make every scholarly and scientific paper available for free on the internet and to enhance academic discussion and collaboration. Academics at more than 15,000 universities can upload papers, books, book reviews, conference presentations, talks, teaching documents, drafts, and thesis chapters. Email notifications arrive when new papers on a topic of interest are uploaded, and items can be saved in an online library.

Research Gate

https://www.researchgate.net/

This site enables researchers to share and access each other’s information. Users can get weekly statistics reports on who has been reading their work and citations. This site allows users to connect with colleagues around the world in order to collaborate on research in all scientific disciplines. Users are asked to describe what they are currently working on, the languages they use, the disciplines, skills, and expertise. They can also add upload work before publication to get feedback from colleagues and make revisions before publication.

Cox Campus

https://www.coxcampus.org/

This free online learning platform hosted by The Rollins Center for Language & Literacy at the Atlanta Speech School aims to eradicate illiteracy by facilitating a virtual community composed of professionals, colleagues, parents, and advocates. It has online video courses, downloadable resource sheets (including guides for using selected picture books with children) and games (such as multiple syllable picture cards), a community discussion board, and printable certificates for completing the courses.

Early Childhood Investigations

https://www.earlychildhoodwebinars.com/about/

Early childhood educators can access free professional development webinars conducted by thought-leaders and experts in the field of early care and education.

Social Justice

https://socialjusticebooks.org

A project of the nonprofit Teaching for Change, this resource is dedicated to helping educators and librarians recognize, develop, and promote more balanced, diverse collections of children’s books for classrooms and libraries. They provide booklists, book reviews, and other critical resources that will help both novice and expert children’s services staff develop critical lenses on contemporary children’s literature. Of note is their Guide for Selecting Anti-Bias Children’s Books, which offers a list of specific features to look for in determining how well a book represents different communities. &