The Auburn Public Library has been chosen as one of five pilot sites across the country for a program aimed at boosting news literacy.

Media Literacy @ Your Library, a project of the American Library Association and the Center for News Literacy @ Stony Brook University, will train library staff to help adult customers become better news consumers, according to a news release.

The library is partnering with the Sun Journal on the project and Executive Editor Judith Meyer is the lead collaborator.

“In today’s often toxic world of deliberate misinformation, we need to be able to help our community separate fact from fiction and make intelligent and informed decisions when hearing the news on the local or national scene,” said library director Mamie Anthoine Ney.

“We will be bringing to the table, with the help of our partner the Sun Journal, the tools to do just that,” she said. “The fact that we are a prototype library in this program makes us proud that we are going to help set the stage nationally for media literacy programming.”

During the six-month pilot, Auburn staff will attend in-person training in Chicago and work on adapting existing media literacy training materials to serve the needs of public librarians and their communities.

The end goal is a web-based curriculum for librarians nationally.

Libraries in Colorado (Estes Valley Library), Alabama (Huntsville-Madison County Public Library), California (San Diego Public Library) and Illinois (Skokie Public Library) are also participating.