From Our Town to Outer Space: Bringing NASA science and engineering to underserved communities through a national public library exhibition program

From Our Town to Outer Space (FOTOS) is a traveling exhibition program (exhibit, activities and training support) for public libraries across the country, intended to deliver quality content and programming around NASA disciplines to underserved and underrepresented communities. This program is led by the Space Science Institute, with evaluation services conducted by the Education Development Center (EDC). A major goal of this program was to introduce library staff and their patrons to quality exhibitions and programming around NASA goals and accomplishments. A special emphasis was placed on Aeronautics, as pre surveys of library staff and patrons showed that while Aeronautics was an area of great interest, it was not clear to respondents that it was a priority of NASA's. Seven libraries were chosen to host the exhibit and related programming, while training and other opportunities were made available to any interested locations (even if they did not host the exhibition). To date, this program has delivered a 700 square foot exhibition and accompanying training program (including an in-person workshop in Boulder, CO for participating libraries), 7 activities which have gone through product review, and 4 training webinars for host and non-host sites.