Fort Collins Coloradoan: Do you think before you click? Your library wants you to.

As “fake news” continues to trend — and misleading articles and sensationalized headlines circulate social media — Poudre River Library District is on a mission to do what libraries do best: inform.

“After the (2016) election, fake news really came into the public’s view and, since we really want to meet the needs of our community, I thought, ‘hey, let’s do a class on fake news,’ ” said Laurel Castellana, a library assistant who pitched the idea last year.

The library district introduced the class “Avoiding Fake News: A Battle Plan For Accurate Online Information” in February.

It brought in almost 20 attendees — a “huge” turnout by library standards — as Castellana, library assistant Sara Nesbitt and librarian Amy Holzworth led the class through ways to think critically about how and where to get news.

The district’s third class, which is free and open to anyone, will take place from 10 a.m. to noon Saturday at Harmony Library, 4616 S. Shields St.

“We’re all information professionals … and fake news is — I don’t even like to call it information, per se — but it’s information that’s designed to make you act on your gut and not necessarily your brain,” Nesbitt said. “It’s sort of to get you to react and not really think.”

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