New wellness tool kit for teens at the Rapid City Public Library

RAPID CITY, S.D. (KOTA) - Rapid City Public Library has launched a new health & wellness resource just for teens. The subjects the resource covers are diverse from stress and anxiety to relationships, and even green living. It’s basically a Wikipedia for all things teen, but it’s better than Wikipedia. All the information is cited at the end of the article, allowing students to use this as a reputable research resource. Each article is reviewed by professionals in the related field before it’s published. Users can see who it was reviewed by at the bottom of the page and follow a link to see their credentials on the Expert Review Board, along with the credentials of every other professional that is working with the site.

Baylee Schultz, Teen Librarian says, “The site also has Q&As that are submitted by users and answered by one of their many qualified professionals.” All Q&As are archived under their specific subject so that teens can check to see if their questions have already been answered. There are user-submitted stories written by teens going through things that almost anyone can relate to.

Schultz also takes us on a visual tour of the new databases. A favorite among most users is the Calm Room. This page is filled with a multitude of stress-relieving items, including calming videos, live streams of cute animals, Ted Talks about mindfulness, podcasts of self-guided breathing exercises, and much more.

The site has a Hotline link on the sidebar. This will lead the user to a page with different hotlines for all sorts of things that may cause havoc in a person’s life. Numbers listed at the top of the page include several different national suicide and crisis hotlines. It also encourages users to speak with a trusted adult in their life. The database will also be translated into different languages, there is an option to have the article be read aloud, and users can download articles to read later.

This resource is a safer and more reliable tool for teens to use versus online searches that can be told any number of things that may or may not be true.

Please click above to watch the interview.

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