Category: libraries…of the FUTURE
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The Cockroach Approach: Outreach
Part One of a four part series. Read the introduction here. Children’s librarians have cornered the market on outreach. We go out to schools, preschools, daycares and present book talks, storytimes and other programs that promote our services, materials and meet a developmental need for our users. Some librarians go even further and perform at…
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Want to Save Libraries?
I think every library, be it public, school, academic, or special, can learn a lot about survival from the children’s departments of public libraries–because we’re not going anywhere. Even if the rest of the library as we know it collapses and crumbles, children’s librarians will still be around, in some form or another, doing what…
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Be Authentic
Lately I’ve really felt a yearning to work more with teens. I recently had the opportunity to booktalk some of Adam Selzer’s books to some fifth grade classes, and it was amazing. To prepare, I asked Adam for some fifth-grade related biographical tidbits to share with the kids. One question was, “What did you think…
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Be The Change
What we need is toolkit for dealing with these roadblocks. Some ideas to get us safely started. I want to make change but am so overwhelmed by all that needs to be done in my system, I’ve no clue where or how to start. Maybe for your next post? Thanks for helping keep me inspired…
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The Whole Library Approach
When I was still a preschool teacher, we talked a lot about the whole child approach, which, essentially, meant you took a whole child into consideration when you are teaching him or her. When we deal with children we teach, we can’t just have Susie the student. We also have Susie the daughter, the artist,…
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librarian, weed thyself.
So the most recent Andy Poll was about weeding the library profession: http://twitter.com/#!/wawoodworth/status/129942473882611713 Most people are replying with attributes (View the story “Weed the librarian” on Storify) rather than a set of criteria, which I don’t think is really answering the question. How do you weed librarians out of the profession? Don’t reinvent the wheel–just…
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make it happen: teen space.
(In the interest of full disclosure, I worked at Forest Park Public Library back in 2006/2007, and I must admit that every single time I worked a desk shift, I would stare balefully at the local history room. Not that I dislike local history, mind you, but because I like and care about teenagers more—and…
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the ethical librarian
I started writing this post in October of 2010, and it’s an issue that still bothers me today. On a listserve recently there was a pretty brutal backlash against a teen librarian who essentially said he was burning out and that (I paraphrase) “So many teens suck these days and I don’t want to serve…
Hi, Miss Julie 