The SurRural Librarian

Sunday has been an on again, off again conference day for me, with a web 2.0 smackdown by Joyce Valenza and friends being the highlight. Joyce ran a swift & informative session complete with a back channel chat room for those of us who liked to be overstimulated. The wiki for the session has some great links.

Other than that, and the plethora of fabulous authors signing books in the stacks, it’s been a bust. I’ve walked out on two sessions today, both of which were supposed to feature web tools but neither of which had internet connections.

ALA, please.

There’s only wireless in one of the buildings here and my hotel charges for access, so my connectivity is spotty. I’d really, really like the speakers to have access at least. After helping the IT “support” person change the resolution on a Mac, I sprinted back down to the other building to hear Junot Diaz’s talk, but he didn’t show up. So I’ve given up on real information today and now I’ve joined the other power vampires scattered on the floor in the hallway and am simply awaiting the book cart drill teams.

(That is not me pictured getting my book signed, I wish it was. I might be a geek, but I can’t wait in a 3 hour line.)

Here's one for the other fangirls

I’ve been at ALA Annual in Chicago since Wednesday, but connectivity has been spotty outside of the west building in the convention center (don’t get me started). Here’s my attempt to play catch up.

All-day Learning for Life training got me off to a decent start for my workshops in Vermont, though I’m a little afraid of all the work I have to do.

Saturday was the official start of the conference and I attended AASL Standards for the 21st Century Learner in a Read/Write Web class room with Susannah Tamarkin. She’s got a very nice collection of materials at:
http://ithsnyclibrary.wikispaces.com and is a big proponent of wikis, Google Docs & Clipmarks – used together with kids. Nice presentation!

Next up was the ALA president’s program with Laurie Halse Anderson , Jacqueline Woodson , and Alan Lawrence Sitomer the authors showed big love to the school librarians, despite having to sit through endless announcements and even a treasurer’s report. LHA was seriously testifying to the crowd. We’ve got to step up during troubled times, the kids need us. Keep the libraries open & the stacks fresh, keep libraries open longer. Be generally awesome.

LHA and I take simultaneous photos.

I also slipped into Science Fiction and Fantasy: Uncovering the Modern World of Information, Society, and Technology through Metaphor and Imagination with science fiction and fantasy authors R. A. Salvatore, Ken Scholes, Margaret Weiss,  and Robert Charles Wilson for some interesting thoughts about speculative fiction. There were too many speakers in too short a time to get very deep, but it was provocative nonetheless.

The session “What Do I Watch, Listen to, Play, or Download Next: Readers Advisory Techniques for the Digital World” looked like they’d have a good collection of links to watch out for, but these are not yet posted.

I’m heading off to Chicago for Learning4Life Training & ALA Annual.

After this, I’ll be running Learning4Life workshops around Vermont for school librarians, one in each VSLA region. I’ll have a schedule together by the end of the summer. Learning4Life is the national implementation plan for the Standards for the 21st-Century Learner.

It’s my first time at the annual conference and I plan to blog a bit from there if I don’t get lost in what is promised to be a labyrinth of vendors. Gaming pavilion, here I come.

Or so I’ve been told by my tiny collection manager (maybe you know her – curly hair, 4 feet tall, 7 years old). After four years of reading reviews & doing my best to stretch my budget, I am in the position of watching my hold queue grow to astronomical proportions for … gift books! This year, we’ve been very lucky in receiving many super book gifts from our families. And wouldn’t you know it, suddenly I’ve got hordes of girls lining up for Fairy Realm & Rainbow Fairy books. The arrival of these series coupled with the sudden explosion of reading in the early grades is creating a rave for fairy books.

And yes, I am a grownup. So take it from the tiny collection manager, you’d better stock these series if you know what’s good for ya.

free, as in kitten

I went live with my new library catalog last week. Thanks to the Green Mountain Library Consortium and Richard Pritsky at Carpenter-Carse I’m finally fulfilling my open-source dreams. I’ve been wanting to try Koha since I started at this tiny school, but I wasn’t up for running it myself. Thankfully, the Consortium came along to hold my hand. And now I can say without reservation, if you are considering going with Koha and you have a small library, do it. It’s a thing of beauty and very simple to use. I’m not going to link to my catalog here because there are too many things I want to work on before I’m ready to broadcast it to the world, but did want to share – I’m live!

If you’re lucky enough to have a book budget for next year, then your thoughts might soon be turning to Collection Development, or as it’s known in the real world – Shopping!

I love that spring cleaning time comes right before the start of the next fiscal year, because now I can take that stack of School Library Journals out to the hammock and start tearing out the pages. I do eventually use the computer for most of my collection development tasks, but I love good old print for the ease with which I can lay on my back & swing without having to squint to see my screen in the sun.

Of course, I have to do the usual statistic gathering – collection evaluation, finding out new units the teachers are doing next year, deciding which percentage I can spend on picture books, but for now – the field is wide open. And I just love browsing when I know I’ll have money to spend.

Here are some of my favorite (possibly non-traditional) ways to look for books to buy.

A trip to the Eric Carle Museum Library. If you are any where near Amherst, MA, I highly recommend traveling to the museum and spending some quality time with their picture book collection. You can peruse to your heart’s content and they have a magnificent collection of new & old picture books. Bring something to take copious notes with!

Your local independent book store. Again, spend hours browsing & reading and take notes. I always let the booksellers know who I am and what I’m up to, it’s a nice way to connect and I don’t want anyone to feel weirded out by the adult hanging out in the kid’s section all afternoon. Booksellers, like librarians, are an opinionated & quirky bunch, so you’re sure to find different books than you would on the shelves of box stores or the covers of publisher catalogs. And yes, I also lurk the stacks of my public libraries.

Blogs. This year make sure to check out Fuse 8’s Top 100 Picture Books Poll Results for any titles you might be missing from your collection. Elizabeth Bird has done a wonderful job of detailing each book in this top 100 list. She’s got links to super book talk resources like videos and gorgeous pictures from the books.  This list is compiled from her reader’s top 10 lists, and I find it an interesting slant on the usual.

Some of my favorite independent blogs for book reviews are:
planetesme.blogspot.com
hiplibrariansbookblog.blog-city.com
abbylibrarian.blogspot.com
6traits.wordpress.com
And check out the fabulous Vintage Kids Books My Kid Loves for other titles you might want to dig up used on Amazon. www.vintagechildrensbooksmykidloves.com

Let children mark up your catalogs. I let my 7 year old go crazy with a marker in my stack of journals, flyers & catalogs, just circling the books she thinks look interesting. Getting input from kids on the title & cover-appeal of books is a great help when you’re deciding which will fly off the shelves. I’m planning some class time where I give each student 10 stickers with their name on them and a stack of catalogs, and ask them to choose ten books they think I should buy. That would be a fun end of the year activity. We could work in some math too. Or you could just leave them out on the tables year-round.

Vermonters who use Titlewave will be glad to know that they have the DCF, Red Clover & GMBA lists built right in. Thanks Grace!

I had a great time speaking at the Dorothy Canfield Fisher Award conference on Friday. Here’s my handout with links.

This year I focused more on the comics unit I did with my 5th & 6th grade students. It was a collaboration with our awesome art teacher, Lauren. Each student created a 3-5 page comic (using Comic Life) based on one of the DCF Books. The kids really got into these projects, and I learned a lot about working on longer projects with students. We also discussed the DCF Blog I moderated this year & the wiki I use with my students. I had a super audience, thanks everyone for coming!

The blog got 1,500 comments from Vermont students this year, wow. I was so impressed by some of the insightful & fun comments the kids made. There were plenty of “this book is awesome” type-posts, but many were more articulate and interesting. You can imagine, after 1,500 – I got pretty critical.* I’ll still be maintaining the blog for the committee next year, but Kate Davie from  Blue Mountain Union School will be moderating. Get your clicker finger ready Kate.

*In case you’re wondering, as the moderator I just weeded out posts for inappropriate language or spam, everything else was approved. But as a teacher, I insisted my own students express a “unique thought and opinion”. I also had them return to posts and read what other commenters had to say and “engage in respectful dialog”. For me, it was a great tool for teaching online behavior. My students knew I was the moderator, so a couple of times they asked me why kids in other schools were allowed to write shorter posts – how unfair!

Last week my junior high students tried to determine which of these sites where legitimate & which were not. This is always a fun couple of classes, because some of the sites are hilarious, and the kids enjoy it.I have to dig up new ones every couple of years because word gets out – they’re all big Tree Octopus fans. I like finding real sites that might trip them up. It was really fun breaking the news to them that the OLPC program was real. They were convinced that if there was a laptop that cool in real life, they would know about it.

It’s an excellent lesson for me every time as well. I’ve been working with these same students for a while now and I’m still surprised to see how hard this is for them. They know all the steps (find out the author, Google them, read the fine print, etc.) but they really do not yet have the life experience to pick out the fakes. It’s a good reminder of how young they still are, and how much help they still need navigating life online.

Here’s this year’s list.

• Vasco Nunez de Balboa @ All About Explorers

• Cryptomundo » Snake Longer Than School Bus Discovered!

• Google Gulp

• Dog Island Free Forever

• Carnivorous Sea Squirt !

• Tambora

• One Laptop per Child (OLPC)

• Republic Of Molossia – Official Website

• The Ova Prima Foundation

• DreamTech International [CLONES-R-US]

• BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Mysterious mammal caught on film

• buydehydratedwater

• McWhortle Enterprises, Inc.

• Stick Insects

• AFP: SKoreans clone cats that glow in the dark: officials

• Strawberry Pop-Tart Blow-Torches

• Dihydrogen Monoxide Research Division – dihydrogen monoxide info

• Promachoteuthis sulcus

Update – see the comments to find out which of these are legit, if you want to test yourself.

What a super idea! I carpool with three young readers and I’ve been trying to keep a stash of new library books in the car to keep them occupied & quiet. Here is a school bus driver taking this idea to the extreme.

This could be a great collaboration between driver & librarian. Why not check out a different selection every couple of weeks to your bus drivers? Give them a suitcase full. Out here in the country, our kids spend plenty of time captive on the bus, we should give them something fun to do to pass the time.

(I’ll admit I clicked on this article in my reader because I thought the headline read Wii School Bus Driver. I was pretty excited about the possibilities. )

WI School Bus Driver Launches Words on Wheels

First, someone I voted for actually gets to be president. Then, a book I adore wins the Newbery. What’s going on here?

And look at the really sweet post on Gaimain’s journal about getting the phone call from the committee.

Yay for the Graveyard Book!

In response to a post on VTcite, I jotted down a few things I’ve learned working with kids & 2.0 tools, so I thought I’d share them here as well.

• Don’t use tools that require students to use a personal email address. (There are different ways to get around this, some sites like pbwiki now allow you to generate user logins for students. Edublogs will allow blog comments without email addresses, etc.)
• Preview drafts of student work & engage them in editing.
• The teacher should be the admin of the site and, depending on the project, require approval for posts.
• With blog projects, require students comment on each other’s posts. Encourage students to make comments brief, conversational and original.
• Protect their privacy by having students use pseudonyms and develop their online voice by always using the same pseudonym.
• Practice & teach respectful dialogue. (This does not come as easily as you would expect online. Tone is a challenge for new writers and kids love to use all caps and lots of exclamation points, they don’t realize they’re shouting.)
• Make it an assignment, not a suggested activity.
• Give students time in school to use the tool, do not expect kids to do it from home (remember the digital divide).
• Also use it as a fun time-filler for kids who finish other tasks early.

The new White House website went live during the inauguration and it’s got a blog!
http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/

And look at that, blog is even in the URL. As if it needs to be repeated here, whole sale, blind filtering of blogs & wikis in schools has got to end. As if these weren’t argument enough…

http://www.nytimes.com/ref/topnews/blog-index.html
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/
http://www.npr.org/blogs/talk/
http://www.barackobama.com/blog/
http://www.johnmccain.com/Blog/
http://vsla.info/
http://www.vermontlibraries.org/
http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/blogs.html

Do school tech admins really want to be adding exceptions to their filters for every single legitamate use of a blog on the web? Or can we focus on teaching our students how to search for & evaluate information online?

Every reader his [or her] book & every book its reader.

These two laws of library science are constantly ringing through my head when I’m selecting books to purchase or weed. I have some readers at school who absorbed just about anything I give them with glee. I’ve got more who are always happy with the same genre and rarely deviate, and a few who are extremely difficult to please. It’s this last group that I spend most of my time thinking about.  Librarians are always on the search for that one book that will hook the potential readers.

Now and then I read a book that strikes me as just the thing to enchant a certain reader. Peter Gould’s Write Naked is one of those possible favorite novels. Peter writes with and about passion in a way rare in YA books. Romantic passion, but also passion for art, for community, for understanding. Knowing Peter & his passion for teaching & drama, this doesn’t surprise me a bit. This is a book I wish every high school would have on its shelves, sitting there waiting for the right reader. And not because I wish Peter well with his novel (which, of course, I do!) but because I’m sure it’s the potential love of some quietly passionate 10th grader out there, who’s just waiting for this book to come into his life.

Vermont kids will be especially drawn to this book. It’s got great local flavor (it’s set just down the road from my house!) and describes our rural life style romantically but truthfully. The characters are unique, unconventional and pretty darn lovable. The title is a little racy but the content is certainly appropriate for high schools. Having heard Peter read a segment at the VSLA conference last fall, I highly recommend him as a school visit. His infectious enthusiasm is just perfect for students. Great job Peter!

Reviews & other info here: http://us.macmillan.com/writenaked

Judging by recent letters in SLJ (scroll down to “pathetic”) librarians – like the rest of the population – really freak out when people charge kids books with promoting racist stereotypes. There’s a little hubub over Skippyjon Jones over there. Is this a surprise? if you write a book where a character adds “o” to the end of words he says “with his best Spanish accent”, you’re going to annoy people.

I think that because we read these books to our children, we feel especially protective of them. Or if we loved the books as kids, it can be especially hard to hear they’re full of bigotry. Has anyone read Narnia lately? Peter Pan? Little House?

When a person tells you that you’ve offended them, try this. Listen. We are living in a time of amazing changes, and a time of the same old prejudices. When buying books for our kids to read, librarians seem to spend an awful lot of time worrying about “appropriate language”. I’d really love to see more messages on our listservs about super books with positive female & minority characters. I’ve got limited funds, just like you. Help me find the best & the most progressive books for my school. Not just avoid the ones with “f bombs”.

So here’s my little collection development tip. Seek out the voices of people unlike yourself and hear what they have to say.

Debbie Reese has an article in this month’s SLJ Native Voices and her blog is a great resource for a little mind-opening. See this post and note the links to her writings about Thanksgiving.

Browse through Everyone’s Kids Books and see if there are some titles you want to check out.

And if some parent mentions to you they found a library book offensive, don’t hand them your selection policy and walk away. Listen to what they have to say. It might be the start of a great conversation.

Now I’m hoping someone else has some good suggestions.

In the ongoing battle to reassert the application of Fair Use in our schools, The Center for Social Media just released their new code of best practices in fair use. There is a video, which I wish were just a little snappier, but it’s helpful for teachers.