College of Computing & Informatics (CCI) Masters of Library & Information Science student Hannah Spratt and CCI Professor Denise Agosto, PhD, won a 2018 Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA) best paper award for their article “Fighting Fake News: Because We All Deserve the Truth,” published in the Summer 2017 issue of Young Adult Library Services. YALSA is a division of the American Library Association (ALA) with a mission to support library staff in alleviating the challenges teens face, and in putting all teens ‒ especially those with the greatest needs ‒ on the path to successful and fulfilling lives. Each year the YALSA Writing Award honors the best writing in YALSA’s blogs and journals. The full list of winners in four categories was announced at the conclusion of the 2018 ALA Midwinter Meeting. Spratt and Agosto will be recognized at YALSA’s Membership Meeting at the ALA Annual Conference in New Orleans this summer.
Agosto’s forthcoming book, Information Literacy and Libraries in the Age of Fake News (Libraries Unlimited, 2018), will discuss the role of libraries in relation to fake news, with a focus on teaching users how to identify information and information sources that they can trust. Agosto will speak on this topic during a Library Journal webinar on June 7. Her presentation, “The Fake News Controversy: What Does it Mean for Libraries?” will discuss the ongoing fake news controversy in the U.S. and offer ideas for making libraries more effective information literacy educators within their unique communities.
Hannah Spratt is currently employed by the New York Public Library as an Information Assistant for Teen Services at the Bronx Library Center. Her passion is working with teens in an urban public library and developing programing that is both fun and informative. She will be graduating from Drexel University's LIS program this summer.
Agosto, whose research interests include youth information behaviors, youth and social media, and public library services, is the director of CCI’s LIS program. Founded in 1892, CCI’s program is one of the oldest continuously operating LIS programs in the United States, and has been ALA-accredited since 1924.