The SurRural Librarian

Librarians Escape Being Turned into Teachers in FL District

That’s the headline I just received in my inbox via the SLJ Extra Helping.

What?!

Man, I work my tail off so everyone in my building thinks of me as a teacher. What are they thinking with a headline like this? I’m sure my classroom teachers would just love it.

Here’s what they’re really talking about if you’re curious. Librarians being moved to classroom teaching positions, and school libraries loosing their librarians.  Why they couldn’t have written a better headline is beyond me.

It’s the time of year when I start getting very excited about next year’s book budget. I try to get the bulk of my collection development done before September, because I simply get too busy after that. Now I’m diving into my stacks of torn & annotated SLJs, notes from the suggestion box and archived emails form various journals & listservs. But my favorite book buying pastime of all is searching through the archives of my favorite book review bloggers.

If I had the stamina and discipline, I’d be blogging every good book I read this year. Alas, it doesn’t see to be happening. How do they manage it?

Here are my favorites, I’d love to hear if you have other recomendations.

Everyone should read the truly wonderful Planet Esme: planetesme.blogspot.com

The Hip Librarians Book Blog: hiplibrariansbookblog.blog-city.com

Abby the Librarian: abbylibrarian.blogspot.com

Picture book of the Day: http://6traits.wordpress.com

Browsing through their fun & informative reviews makes me realize just how super duper my job is. Looking for great kids books to buy - how much fun IS this?!

Cory Doctorow (of BoingBoing) has a brand-spanking-new YA Sci Fi novel out called Little Brother.

Cool guy that he is, he’s posted electronic copies of the book online for free. Instead of accepting offers of donations from grateful readers, he’s set up a site where potential donors can send a hard copy of the book to a school or library that requests it.

How does it work, you ask? Welllll, our budget spent for the year, I thought I’d see. On Wednesday I asked to be added to the list of libraries and our name & address were posted on their site. Today (Friday) I received a copy in the mail from an anonymous donor! How coool is that?

See his site for more details.

And Thank You Anonymous!! I’ll be spending my Mother’s Day in the hammock with our new copy of Little Brother (librarian’s privilege). By Monday - it’ll be in the hands of a student.

Pre-readers review: great title, super cover and jacket blurbs from Scott Westerfeld & Neil Gaiman. Ooooh!

I’ve made a new page (see above) with links to materials from some of the presentations I’ve given recently. The latest is the DCF Conference session I did yesterday in Stowe.

“Using Fun Technology to Promote Student Engagement”

As usual I talked far too much and for too long, but the audience was great and had excellent input & questions. We have so much fun at school with these DCF projects, I was so jazzed to share it all. Thanks to Grace Greene for inviting me to speak!