GIFSL* 66: Requests (made public) (+ Eragon, book 4)

(Two years ago)

Miss, I want to reserve Eragon book 4
Um, as far as I know it's not written yet - ?
No, it isn't.
So is he going to write it, do you know?
Probably.  Maybe.  I hope so.
Well...
I'd really like to reserve it, Miss.
OK then...

The kids know I have a collection of requests on post-t notes on a laminated sheet in my office .  This is what it looks like pretty much all the time:

It's very much in plain sight, where the kids can see it and I can too.  When a book has been requested and ordered, if it's orderable; Eragon book 4 clearly wasn't) it goes onto a post-it note with the kid's name and goes on here (the white sheet was a rather long list a kid brought in with her).  When the book comes in, we marry it up with the note and the kid/s on the list get to borrow it first.

It's also really effective (in terms of me remembering and in terms of the kid making the request feeling nicely important and valued) to, if you can, ring your wonderful local independent bookshop at lunchtime while the kid is there, to ask them to get in/put aside a copy of this title.  Kids have this happy shine when what they want is treated this way - it's good library PR too. 

I put a lot of my orders through a wonderful local independent bookshop - they know their stuff, especially with young adult fiction, and are fabulously helpful.  And it puts money back into the local area's economy.  And they put up with lunchtime phone calls when I order a single book or two at a time; so the kids also are alerted to a wonderful local helpful bookshop, which is not a bad thing either.

So cut to this week.  Same kid, two years taller, two years older (but still at school.  I'd kinda begun to wonder if he'd still be at school when Christopher Paolini got around to writing book 4....) bounces into my office with a happy smile on his face:

MISS!
Yes?
ERAGON BOOK 4!
Yup, I know, that post-it note is still there...
It's coming out in November!
What, he's written it?
YES!
Really?  Wow.

We look it up.  He has. It will.

The happy life of teacher librarians: wishes do come true.

Cheers

Ruth

GIFSL* 65: from top stand-up comedians. Yes, really!

Photo used under a Creative Commons license

I am happy to get ideas and inspiration from wherever I can find them, and so clicked through on a Twitter link to read Michael Bierut's design column on Seven Things Designers Can Learn From Stand Up Comics.

What did I find?  Seven things teacher librarians re-imagining their libraries and looking for design ideas and inspiration and all sorts of things can learn from stand up comics.  Really truly.

This is the brief version, with my own comments. 

1. It's all about the basics.  Librarywise, stuff being shelved and findable.  A welcoming, helpful atmosphere and friendly staaff.  A library that encourages and inspires.  Resources and services that the kids want and need.  You know.  So do the kids
2. Once you've mastered the basics, make the work your own.  Every school library, like every classroom, bears the stamp of the personality of the teacher/teacher librarian in charge of it and responsible for it.  The art and science of teaching is a juggle of personality and knowledge and human relations and all sorts of other alchemies.  I know, in another library space, that I wouldn't do exactly what I have done at my present school.  I know that another teacher librarian, in my current library, wouldn't do things the same either.  It's not about better or worse, but different.  Playing to your strengths, with the goal of making it as effective as you can for the kids.
3. Respect your audience.  That's kids, and teachers, and parents.  Kids, because sometimes they're so easy to respect, and sometimes difficult to respect: although I have found that exquisite, courteous interest from a teacher librarian can completely discombobulate a noxious student, opening the way to achieving a positive outcome for both.  Teachers can be irritating (late and lost resources, forgotten bookings etc) but like anything, there's a story both sides (teacher librarians can be irritating too: let me count the ways...or not; you know).  I'm not keen on a them and us mentality.  It's us, all teachers (whether teacher librarians or other classroom teachers) working together.
4. Know your tools.  The standard stuff - cataloguing and other organisational tools.  The teaching tools - methods and strategies and ideas.  More resources in print and digital form and more than we have ever had before.  The tools of character and style - patience, interest in kids, enthusiasm... We have a huge toolkit, as big and Tardis-like as the mother's bag in the Swiss Family Robinson (I've never forgotten that - whatever they needed, she'd popped in that sailcloth bag before the shipwreck).
5. Honour your craft.  Work hard, create challenges for yourself, aim to never coast and always improve.  Use your personal learning network, your willingness to be a lifelong learner hunting out new ideas from blogs, Twitter, email lists, the media, anywhere you can. 
6. Don't be afraid of failure.  Not everything I try works out.  Last week I planned an exciting lesson and realistically, on reviewing how it went, would barely give myself a pass grade.  And a prac teacher watched it.  So, why didn't it work as well as I'd planned and hoped?  How can I do better?  If we don't model coping with failure, valuing failure, using it as a launch pad, how can we expect kids to learn how important it is, learn to be resilient, learn to be brave?
7. Finally, never forget you have a special gift.  How much fun is it to work in a school library?  Huge fun!  Barack Obama in a speech to librarians some years ago, talked about libraries as being a magic threshold.  We not only get to cross that magic threshold each day, we get to influence the experience of everyone who crosses it too.  Teaching is an amazing gift - that alchemy when it works, the pleasure of the company of so many different, engaging personalities and dreams and ideas.  Lucky lucky lucky (as I remind myself on the days when I end up tired and dispirited; because tomorrow is another day, and plenty of good things happen even on the tough days).

Click on to read the article in full here, with Michael Bierut's designer observations rather than my teacher librarianish ones:
http://observersroom.designobserver.com/oblog/post/seven-things-designers-can-learn-from-stand-up-comics/27038/

Cheers

Ruth

*GIFSL= good ideas for school libraries.  An ongoing series on this blog.  Find more of them by clicking here.

The happy life of teacher librarians: Inspiration for your library is everywhere...

As I type this, I'm on hold to a major newspaper publisher (problems with our subscription).  Instead of hold music, they are advertising at me.

"Subscribe to [publication X]," the smooth tones of the voiceover guy says, "and you'll never miss an issue.  In both senses of the word."  (or words to that effect).

My ears prick up.  There is inspiration for your library everywhere.  That's a tag line/slogan that a library could burgle and adapt...

[brainstorming here]

Come to your library and you'll never miss an issue

Research at your library and you'll never miss an issue

Learn at your library and you'll never miss an issue

Ask at your library and you'll never miss an issue

.....

lots of possibilities.

Fancy it up into a sign, and you've got free promo material (it could go on bookmarks, too) that Big Newspaper Company paid good dollars for from a smart advertising agency... and you borrowed for nix apart from being attentive

(or being on hold for longer than one would wish, if I take the half-empty glass view, which generally I don't!)

What have you seen in marketing/advertising that could be adapted to use in a library?

The happy life of teacher librarians: inspiration is everywhere (and sometimes, being on hold can be useful!)

Cheers

Ruth

GIFSL* 64: Cheap Bookmark Week (Friday)

This is one of my favourite ideas.  It taps into libraries as places with facts and information: facts and information can can be fun and light as well as heavy.  It offers the opportunity for some fun interaction when you hand over the book and bookmark.  It recycles something you can find in op shops on a reasonably regular basis.

See that price tag?  $4.  The most I've paid for a box of Trivial Pursuit is $6.  And what's inside?

No, they're not question cards, they're bookmarks!  Lots and lots of them!  No guillotine work today, just some fun to be had.

It's probably a slightly pricier idea than some of the other ones from this week, but here's a comparison.  A commercial library supplier I checked had quite a few bookmarks which came in bundles of 200 bookmarks for $40.  In this box of Trivial Pursuit I got 200 bookmarks for $4.  A tenth of the price.  Still cheap as chips, and fun! (This idea is part of my presentation about Re-Imagining your School Library: I've presented it in Newcastle and south-western Sydney in the last month, so I know there are TLs in those areas scouring their op shops and garage sales for Trivial Pursuit!)

Links in again with a theme of the library being a place where you find facts and information (and fun, the unexpected, a happy moment) - oh, there are lots of ways you could tie this in to a wider promotional theme.

Hope you've enjoyed the Cheap Bookmark Week ideas on the blog this week - do comment, your feedback is always appreciated.

Cheers

Ruth

*GIFSL = good ideas for school libraries, an ongoing series on this blog.

GIFSL* 63: Cheap Bookmark Week (Thursday)

Kids have an ongoing fascination with name definitions - hardly surprising, as they are, as in the subliminal story of Possum Magic and a gazillion other books, discovering and refining who they are in the world.  I myself as a teacher librarian have had enormous fun solemnly assuring Kid A that the name of their best friend/ boyfriend/girlfriend could well mean "Viking vomit", but if they looked up this wonderful book it might be able to reassure them..... Oh miss, it DOESN'T mean that!

Parents have an enthusiasm (or used to, maybe most use the internet baby name sites now?) for baby name books, which become ripe for the culling when their baby-naming days are over.  Which is why you don't have to hunt extra extra hard to find a baby name book in an op shop/charity shop/garage sale.

This one cost me a whole $3.  571 pages.  Two bookmarks per page for most of it, four for others.

 That's over 500 bookmarks for peanuts (571 pages is of course half that number of actual paper pages) with a bit of guillotining.

Find New Characters At Your Library

There's a theme to which this could be tied, easy-peasy.  Book promotion ideas based around characters.  Have you met Severus Snape?  What about Harry Crewe?  and on and on with book characters as a way into encouraging students to try reading something new.

I know some teacher librarians prefer to laminate bookmarks - yes, it's more durable, lets you have two different sides stuck together and so forth.  I mostly don't laminate our bookmarks, for several reasons.  One is cost - we hand out hundreds of bookmarks in any given week, and laminating each would add significant cost; I'd rather be able to hand out as many as possible without worrying about how much they're costing, as I'm on a tight budget.  What I save on laminating can buy more books/resources.  Another is time - running the laminator, guillotining/trimming the results etc. all takes time.  A third is value - kids are kids are kids, and even if we give them a precious lovely laminated bookmark, I'm not so sure that most of them would treasure it as they ought.  Better a shorter-lifespan item that I don't have to stress about and they don't either (much easier to get a new bookmark with a new loan than have a 'dragon in pearls' interrogate them about the lovely bookmark they got last time, where is it, they should have brought it, well OK here's another but you take care of it this time, etc etc).  As I said in my first post, these are bookmarks I can hand out like confetti with a cheery smile on my face, and ones that can bring a smile to a kid's face because they're amusing/quirky/unexpected/fun.

I did have a couple of girls who were enquiring about when our next 'new' bookmarks would be out - and nobody was more surprised than me to find that they had a complete collection of the themed cardboard bookmarks I devise - Valentine's Day, Harmony Day, ANZAC Day, thrillers, holiday borrowing, winter reading etc.... It was heartwarming to know they liked them that much.  But for most of our kids, a bookmark isn't valued/collected like that.  But they do use them and appreciate the gesture/convenience/courtesy/kindness/fun of them, and that's the most important thing. 

These bookmarks aren't just on a stand on the counter, we put one with every loan - wand the loan, stamp the due date, dezap the security tag and add a bookmark, that's our loan routine, whichever of us is doing it.  It's an active gesture.  Here you are.  Enjoy.  Here's a bookmark to help you (and amuse/interest you too - I've never had one that just has the name of the library on it and no more.  It's too valuable real estate not to make it work harder and smarter).  These bookmarks are part of our library's PR.

Tune in tomorrow for one of my favourite cheap bookmark ideas (if you know about it, you'll be able to jump the gun on your colleagues who don't....)

Cheers

Ruth

GIFSL* 62: Cheap Bookmarks Week (Wednesday)

From an op shop/charity shop/garage sale, find the right sort of dictionary, with pages of reasonably thick paper, and a size of book/column width that lends itself to bookmarks:

...like this one, and you have hundreds of bookmarks for a few dollars.  Just some slicing with the guillotine.  (Or do you have a suitable dictionary that is overdue for being culled?)

Libraries Define Your World:
there's a theme you could tie in with it.  I think definitions have a lot of scope for use for display purposes in libraries.  A department store book section featured this, in big print, high on the wall:

And they used definitions on their lampshades:

There's an idea worth adapting/borrowing: how could you use definition decor in your library?  Think of the rich (and amusing) words you could define.  Not just Book, or Reading.  Student.  Work.  Study.  Learn.  Adventure.  Discover.... lots of potential there, isn't there?

Cheers

Ruth

*GIFSL = good ideas for school libraries, an ongoing series on this blog.

GIFSL* 61: Cheap Bookmarks Week (Tuesday)

Before you cry, "VANDAL!" let me point out that this hardback copy of Harry Potter fell to bits after being loved to death by our library borrowers.  Pages falling out all over, irreparable.  But not useless.  Oh dear me no.  Because every left hand page of the book has the header, "Harry Potter".  The pages are a reasonable weight of paper.  And the knowledge of Harry Potter among children is extensive.  And J.K. Rowling created with these books a world and vocabulary that is highly recognisable.  Character names, spell words, place names and more.

So if you take a page with Harry Potter as its header, and slice down either side to a bookmarky sort of size, you'll get, pretty much every time, some bit of recognisable vocab on the page (as well as the Harry Potter cue at the top).  Lupin.  Hogwarts.  butterbeer.  Expelliarmus.  And you will also get a bookmark that kids like and which hasn't cost you a bean.

And there are lots and lots of pages in Harry Potter books, so you have lots and lots of bookmarks which you can share generously and without a qualm.  It's recycling and it's useful and fun.

Tune in tomorrow for another cheap bookmark idea!

Cheers

Ruth

*GIFSL = good ideas for school libraries, an ongoing series on this blog.

GIFSL* 60: Cheap Bookmarks Week (Monday)

We hand out a bookmark with every student loan at our library, for all sorts of reasons.  Because kids like to know what page they're on.  To make it easy for students to know what page they're on without bending book corners (to make it easy for them to do the right thing).  As a freebie.  As a promotional item promoting the library and our current theme.  Because we can.

If you follow the tag for bookmarks on this blog, you'll find a bunch of the ones we've made using Publisher and coloured cardboard (click here or over on the tag cloud on the right on the word 'bookmarks').

With a limited budget (but a confetti-style approach to bookmarks) I'm always on the lookout for inexpensive and clever ways to create fun bookmarks.  By and large, I don't go for laminated-precious, but ones we can hand out with generosity and enthusiasm: so they need to be inexpensive.

One thing we're about in the library is facts and information.  So, get yourself one of these:

...which isn't a tricky find in an op shop/garage sale for a couple of dollars.  Study the pages:

and realise that the column widths line up on either side of the page (in this edition: check if you have a different year's edition).  A bit of guillotine work slicing along the space between the columns and you have hundreds of bookmarks for less than five dollars.  Bargain!  Fun facts and information which the kids enjoy (and which can be tied into a wider library promotional theme if you wish).  The columns lining up means you can read front and back, and if a pic gets sliced, oh well - read the current entry in the current copy of the Guinness Book of Records, waiting for you at your school library!

Here's another facty-book find with equally good potential:

That one cost me a whole four dollars at an op shop.  Thick and full of bookmark potential, hundreds more for very little money.


Tune in tomorrow for another cheap bookmark idea. 

Cheers

Ruth

*GIFSL = Good Ideas For School Libraries

GIFSL* 59: Shhhhhhh! (in the senior study)

Accustomed (and happy) as I am as a teacher librarian to engage with the idea of 'working noise' (let's be real about it, very few school libraries are hushed temples of learning at all times), the senior study area upstairs in our library is a different matter.  There, seniors are expected to be doing silent, individual work; if they want to discuss work or work as a group, they must be elsewhere in the library so the senior study remains a haven of silence and academe.  At least this is my goal (and appreciated by students seeking silence and academe).  So while I wouldn't put this picture up in the main part of the library, it's handy-dandy and apt in the senior study.

Aren't I a clever pop-artist?  Um no, I'm a clever shopper.  It's from Ikea, measures a decent 50cm x 70cm, the item name is Solmyra and you can find it here for a mere $19.99:

http://www.ikea.com/au/en/catalog/products/00177923

Bargain.  Looks good.

(the three other pictures you can see were from Ikea As-Is a couple of years ago at a mere five bucks each).

I'm tempted to buy two more of these Solmyra ones to reinforce the message (it's an ongoing work...!) and have them going down the wall as a nice repetition....

Cheers

Ruth

*GIFSL = Good Ideas For School Libraries .  An ongoing series on this blog (and gee whiz, I'm up to #60???)

Isaac Asimov on libraries: a space ship & a gateway

In 1971, an enterprising children's librarian in Troy, Michigan, wrote to dozens of important people to ask for a letter to the town's children, celebrating the opening of the new library.

Isaac Asimov was one of the 97 respondents.  Isn't this great?

You can read more about the Letters to the Children of Troy here, a few on Flickr here and there are pdfs of all the letters here.  Some names I know, like Edward Ardizzone and First Lady Pat Nixon, and others I don't, but it will be fun to take time to read them and see what they say about books and libraries and reading.  And then see how I can use these ideas forty years later for the library here.

Cheers

Ruth

PS.  This is the letter from Dr Seuss.  Both letters are from the Flickr set linked above.

Found this via Twitter.

ANZAC Day display, 2011

Our ANZAC Day display for 2011.

Flags acquired around Australia Day, when they're plentiful and inexpensive.  Bunting is four sheets of coloured cardboard, cut into pennants and stapled to string.  Photos using Hipstamatic (Kodot Grizzled/John S.)

On top of the bookcase is this picture of ANZAC Cove:

and two great quotes related to the day, the ode and Ataturk on how our sons are now theirs too.

The bookmarks we use feature these two quotes - I designed the bookmarks a few years ago (using Microsoft Publisher, they are printed eight to the page on brown/green cardboard) and they work nicely each year.  It's good to put both those pieces of writing in the hands of our students each ANZAC Day.

The school, of course, has ANZAC Day remembrance assemblies for the students and staff.  The library's display is in support of this.  It's good policy and practice to work in with school/national events like this; sometimes libraries can be perceived as being islands/apart/disconnected.  Better to be at the heart of things.



Lest we forget.

Ruth



10 ways libraries matter in the digital age

From Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.

Greg Landgraf has a short, sweet, to the point and pointed blog entry about 10 ways libraries matter in the digital age.  Here are his main points:

• Libraries serve the disenfranchised.
• Libraries are a gathering place.
• Libraries are a first step to literacy.
• Libraries are there for all ages.
• Libraries help people use the internet.
• … And libraries help people use the internet better.
• Libraries are interested in your privacy.
• Libraries are hubs for preserving the past.
• Libraries are there in a crisis.
• Libraries offer the human touch.

Read the whole article here on the American Libraries site.  I find lists like this useful to reflect on what my school library does, what my work is, what both are and could and should be.

Cheers

Ruth

GIFSL* 58: Enchantment and your school library

@brainpicker on Twitter, and the associated blog Brain Pickings, provide a constant supply of inspiration and ideas on a huge range of topics.  Not narrowcast "teacher librarian-focused stuff", but all sorts of things from left field and out there and what about?, and hey, here's something to think about.  I love foraging among the wider world to bring back good things to inform my teaching (eg. this blog! - see the intro reference to a flypaper mind).

Take this infographic from a recently published business book, Enchantment: the art of changing hearts, minds and actions, by Guy Kawasaki.  Not something I've tripped over in education circles, but a great lens to use in thinking about our business as teacher librarians, promoting our libraries and their services.

Read the whole blog entry on Brain Pickings here, including links to an enchantment aptitude test, an interview with the author, and more. 

As school library staffing is being challenged, our work as teacher librarians evaluated, the ill-informed happy to spout that 'it's all on the internet now' and so forth, this infographic is, to me, valuable professional reflection for considering what I do and why and how, and how I can do it better.

Cheers

Ruth

*GIFSL: good ideas for school libraries

Library website design

Browsing around various library blogs (as you do), I noticed on the Librarian in Black this image of the updated website for the San Jose Public Library.

http://www.sjpl.org/

I'm mulling over ways to have a library website that's accessible to the kids (we don't yet have Student Sharepoint active, many online wiki sites are blocked and we don't yet have a DET wiki option, Moodle is a possibility...).

This provides an interesting idea of how to format/divide/categorise such a site.  It's easy to think, well, that would be useful to have, but the steps before that, the structure/organisation that will be durable and workable and effective - that takes more thinking out.

So, I'm thinking.  And this was handy.  Have you got any library sites you'd like to share in the comments, that you think are durable/workable/effective?

Cheers

Ruth

International Women's Day 2011

We put up the banners and signs - it's great to have resources from previous years.  Check out the entries here to see what they are!

Cheers

Ruth (who wore green today)

Bookstore organisation, or dear old Dewey? or both?

A couple of years ago, when I attended a day for teacher librarians when visual merchandiser Kevin Hennah was talking about his ideas for libraries, one of the ideas he put forward was about organising a library based on bookshop principles rather than Dewey.  From memory, one example he put forward was a public library in New Zealand, where there were about ten major sections that aimed to connect readers and books more quickly and efficiently, by reflecting reader interests and associations rather than the library default of Dewey.  One of those was a travel/places section, which included travel books (900s) and foreign languages books (400s) shelved side by side.

It would be a big big change to do, and in the context of being a NSW DET school library with all the support structures and organisation in place as part of a large education system, it's not something I'd jump into without a deal of thought.

But it's interesting to think about, to consider how else we could organise a library to make it work for our customers.  There are advantages and disadvantages - as when cataloguing a book/resource, you can use several subject headings for the catalogue to help readers find it, but in the end the one physical resource has to get one shelf location (in our current system, one Dewey number); a decision has to be made on the main topic of the book, and thus its final shelf location.

Here's an article about libraries who have changed from Dewey to using bookshop merchandising style organisation.  Food for thought.

One thing I wouldn't do (and have been asked for occasionally over my career) is grouping books by faculty/subject 'because it would be easier'.  Sounds simple, but then it ignores the fact that the 'science' books may also be 'geography' books (eg. volcanoes/natural disasters).  When I politely point this out, the teacher who is suggesting this usually looks thoughtful, and recollects an engagement elsewhere....

There are, though, plenty of ideas from bookshop merchandising that we can borrow for school libraries.  Which of the shelves below would you explore for longer?  These...

or these?

We don't have enough space to put all our books face out; this is one of three bookcases like this, and not all will have everything face out.  But it's better presentation to encourage reading than the first, isn't it?


Cheers

Ruth

Article found via Twitter.
Photographs of shelving from my library's browsing area on the mezzanine: first photo with iPhone camera, second with Hipstamatic iPhone app.

What is a good book? Nancy Pearl's answer

Nancy Pearl, yup, the one that's the model for the librarian action doll, was recently named Librarian of the Year.  In Library Journal's article about this, Nancy discusses her idea of 'a good book'.  I've highlighted a couple of bits that particularly caught my attention.

What is a “good book”?



As part of the author tour for her newest book, Book Lust To Go: Recommended Reading for Travelers, Vagabonds, and Dreamers (Sasquatch Bks.; LJ Xpress Reviews, 10/8/10), Pearl went to Westport, CT, to “talk about good books” to librarians and library patrons. “By good,” she says, “I don’t mean any literary canon, but just books that you might enjoy. A good book is a book someone likes and a bad book is one they don’t like. When someone doesn’t like a book, it doesn’t mean they will never like it. They don’t like it for that moment,” says Pearl.


“We shouldn’t be afraid to suggest a wide variety of books to people. I think libraries are the last democratic institution, small ‘d’ democratic. It wasn’t always that way. Librarians were gatekeepers.... When it comes to readers’ advisory, though, I think we need to validate a patron’s reading,” Pearl says.


“When people ask, ‘What should I read next?’ we should always try to give them three books. One should be pretty close to the one they loved. The second should be a little bit different, a bit of a stretch. The third book is the real stretch book, the reach book. The book they never would have found because it is nonfiction and they only look at Westerns,” Pearl says.

“People come into the library and head straight to the section where they have found the most pleasure.... It is our job to take them around to the rest,” she ­continues.

“I do believe that the more well-written books you read, the less tolerance you are going to have for bad writing, but the hardest thing to define is a well-written book. When someone tells you they liked a book because ‘I love well-written books,’ they usually mean books like award winners, for instance the Pulitzers. Those books win awards for the writing. You don’t have to understand what somebody means by ‘well-written,’ but you have to go beyond the awards we all know and see which books won the Governor General’s Award in Canada, or [Britain’s] Man Booker Prize. No one who reads for the story will say, ‘I like well-written books.’ They will talk about page-turners, books you stay up too late to finish,” Pearl ­concludes.

Lots of food for thought there.  I'm going to try that three book idea... I think I've been more likely, when kids ask, to find three similar rather than that three book progression.  Not always, but often enough that I should be trying to extend myself, as well as my readers.  Always good to get a new perspective!  Read the complete article here.
 
Cheers
 
Ruth

PS.

A few more thought-provoking quotes from the article:

...she is a passionate and diligent advocate for old and important library ideas: literacy, reading, entertainment, enjoyment.... She is neither snobbish about the old ways nor disdainful of new ideas. Ask her about audio or ebooks or gaming, and you’ll get an earful about the importance of stories told in their myriad forms,” says Janes.
*
says Pearl. “My fear is that we don’t recognize or will forget that library service is like a three-legged stool: information, outreach and programming, and reading.”
*
The book will never disappear as a piece of narrative fiction or nonfiction, according to Pearl, but it is obvious that the format, the way it is delivered, is changing. She knows people will always need escape, stories, and ways to look at the world through the experiences of others.


“I think the more you read, the better person you become, because you can see how other people respond, the way they think, and the way they behave in various circumstances,” Pearl asserts.
*
“When you read a book, it is just you and the author. Even when people read the same title, everybody reads a different book.... When you listen to a book, a third person enters the equation,” Pearl says. “It is a different experience.”

GIFSL* 57: Display banned books

Another infographic from Good.is, this time on the most controversial books in the US.

Interactive mage link.  Article/info link.

If you want a longer list, try the ALA site section about banned/challenged books.

One creative Australian teacher librarian of my acquaintance set up a display of banned books in her school library - To Kill a Mockingbird etc - items readily available in her library but which had been subject to censorship/challenge historically/currently.  They were borrowed with great alacrity, and all sorts of interesting discussions ensued, in her student reading circle and beyond.  I haven't tried this one yet, but it's on my list... Maybe a co-operative venture with the English staff?

Cheers

Ruth

GIFSL* no.56: Valentine's Day 2011

What's a teacher librarian to do to fancy up the library for Valentine's Day? (note: as ever, not just for pretty's sake, but to change the space, add excitement and buzz and encourage reading, to get them through the door.)

Cast your peepers over this idea:

That's made from free stuff, folks.  Catalogue/magazine pages.  The tutorial (and source of the picture) is here  but it's not at all a hard idea to play with.  Is it?  Maybe you've got kids who'd like to help?  Maybe you could have some with the names of favourite books/characters on them?  Maybe...

Go play.  Have fun.  Make your library special for your kids, so they say WOW and love being there.  Isn't that how it should be? And won't that be fun for you too?

Cheers

Ruth

*GIFSL = good ideas for school libraries

GIFSL teaser: what's this for?

Just why did I utter little cries of joy and invest in this fabric at Ikea (it's one colourway/design of Monalis, item no 70175082) to the tune of 5 metres @ $9.99/metre? For my school library?

The colours are perfect!  Look, bird houses, and subtle pink birds, and tree trunks!  Squeee!

Guesses in the comments welcome! (I'll answer, and show you, soon...)

Cheers

Ruth