One goal of the OSLIS grant is to create awareness of the OSLIS website and its resources. With that in mind, the OSLIS committee worked with a graphic designer to design postcards and flyers. The postcards for both elementary and secondary levels that highlight how to maximize use of the resources in the three sections of OSLIS. They were printed and mailed to library staff in all Oregon public and private schools in early January 2016. From these postcards, the graphic designer created flyers for elementary, secondary, home schoolers, and these subject-specific areas: language arts, science & health, social studies, counseling, and math. These were uploaded to the OSLIS digital repository. Then the School Library Consultant (SLC) emailed all Oregon Association of School Libraries (OASL) and OSLIST (listserv for Oregon school library staff) members about the flyers, including ideas for how to use them and text for a sample email to forward to staff members at their school. The OSLIS committee paid to place the language arts flyer as an ad in the spring 2016 journal of the Oregon Council of Teachers of English (OCTE). In February and March of 2016, the subject area and home school flyers were emailed to the corresponding statewide teacher organizations (like the Oregon Council for the Social Studies), curriculum specialists at the Oregon Department of Education, home school contacts at the 19 educational service districts in Oregon, and about a dozen home school groups or associations in Oregon. The committee also paid a small fee to have the home school flyer inserted in the 300 bags for attendees of the Oregon Homeschool Convention in late June 2016, the largest conference for home schoolers in Oregon. Additionally, the committee modified the secondary flyer so it addressed secondary and elementary, and then purchased an ad in the summer conference program for the Confederation of Oregon School Administrators (COSA). The School Library Consultant received positive feedback about the promotional materials, and the number of inquiries and login requests increased noticeably for a few months after the promotional campaigns.   

Citation Maker is a tool on OSLIS that uses templates to create bibliographies in MLA or APA format. Students enter source information like author and title, and Citation Maker takes care of formatting. This allows students to spend more time focused on research and writing than on creating their bibliography.

In April 2016, the Modern Language Association of America (MLA) came out with the 8th edition of their style guide. Due to the substantial changes in approach to citing sources, the School Library Consultant (SLC) and Chair of the OSLIS committee determined it was necessary to recreate the elementary and secondary versions of MLA Citation Maker. The SLC and OSLIS Chair studied the new MLA Handbook, purchased the book for two volunteer school librarians and asked them to study it, and documented the changes that needed to be made. This documentation was shared with the vendor that hosts OSLIS, and their developers created new MLA Citation Maker templates. The SLC and OSLIS Chair spent much time checking draft templates, documenting needed changes, and getting feedback from a select group of librarians. Along the way, the SLC communicated with Oregon school library staff via listservs and added a note to the top of the MLA templates to alert users about pending changes. The secondary version went live in late September 2016, and the elementary version went live in November 2016 (although the groundwork for elementary was laid much earlier). The SLC and OSLIS Chair updated the MLA support materials like citation examples, worksheets, and a sample works cited list.

This project took the developers many hours, and it became apparent that the annual grant of $30,000 would not be sufficient. Therefore, the State Library allocated $28,101.90 in additional LSTA funds to the MLA 8 update. The time and effort were worth the investment. Citation Maker is used extensively within Oregon and beyond. For example, North Carolina consistently has heavy usage since their department of education lists OSLIS on their NC Wise Owl page of resources. The School Library Consultant receives a steady stream of positive feedback about Citation Maker, including this from a middle school librarian in Connecticut: "Dear OSLIS Team, First of all, let me say that I really like using OSLIS. It is by far the best resource for teaching elementary and middle school students research and citations of sources. Thank you for all you have done to create such a great site! As a library media specialist, I'm planning to use OSLIS for a student learning objective, beginning with a baseline assessment on Thursday 9/29. I read that you're planning to transition to MLA 8th Ed in late September. I'm wondering if you can let me know if you have achieved the progress that you anticipated in the transition. Are you on target for MLA 8 by late September?" (Yes, it went live by 9/29.)