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I love technology even when I'm less than facile with it. Having come from the horse and buggy days when overdue notices were handwritten, check-out cards (by the thousands) were hand alphabetized for each due date and slowly searched to unite card with returned item, and phone notices ate up a morning each week, how can I not love?

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As summer winds down some public librarians are feeling thankful and school librarians are gearing up.  I have spent a considerable amount of time planning my year (and realizing that some of those plans will get sidelined).  Each year for the past several school years, I have tried some new organizational methods, but have yet to find something with staying power that smooths transitions and helps me in my day to day life.

I was excited when earlier in the summer #readadv had a chat on this very subject. How do librarians get and stay organized?  What is working for other people?  The storify for this chat can be found here.

It was interesting because folks definitely seemed to use a variety of tools – demonstrating that no one method works for “all the things”.  Being of a certain age myself, I have to say that there is an appeal to some of the analog methods and I am more likely to remember something if I write it down on a post-it than if I type it into my google calendar.  Now, don’t get me wrong – I live off my google calendar for the majority of my in the moment time, but when in comes to actual planning, I need something more visual.

Enter bullet journal.  Some folks have been talking about this on twitter and in blog posts for a while, and this is the method I have decided to experiment with for my overall planning of the school year.  The beauty of this system for me is that it seems infinitely tweakable to allow for my own idiosyncrasies.  I can color code, add post-its (and stickers!), dog ear pages, and blend as much of my outside of school life as my teaching life as I see fit.

I will check back in with you all later to see if I can make this one stick!

How do you all keep your library lives organized?

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Stellar Nursery in Orion

This is one of my favorite photos at the always amazing Astronomy Picture of the Day. It shows the Great Nebula in Orion - a huge cloud of gas and energy where suns are forming in a stellar nursery. While the science intrigues me, I see it as a metaphor for what we can do best in youth services - help support and lift up our colleagues anywhere on their career path.

I've been thinking alot about this lately - partly because I've been teaching. There is this aspect of giving information in the act of teaching but a far deeper piece where the students give just as much -  sharing, problem solving, teaching and supporting each other. I always learn when I teach.

I've also been thinking about this - partly because I have been looking at management and hiring not just in our own library but also as I develop workshops, presentations and courses on  youth services management. Part of what you do every day as a manager is look for ways to open a path for the team members to work more smoothly - whether its removing a rock from the path, helping re-find the way, putting the breaks on a cart careening off the path or providing a little muscle to help ease the passage up a tough hill.

Partly because I have been in so many conversations with colleagues all over the country about how to encourage the sharing so we can preserve knowledge but also build on it. We should each want to plug into librarians at all points in their career to network, to share and to encourage their work and passion. Whether new or a vet, we can lift each other up by asking for our colleague's opinions, program ideas, and youth librarianship thoughts.

Amy Koester wrote recently about this is Storytime Underground and I couldn't agree more. We all have something to share, to learn and to gain. It isn't just the bloggers and presenters who have a platform though. It is every youth librarian every day in their work pushing that envelope further out. The stellar nursery isn't just for the beginners in librarianship - it is for everyone along their career's path. We all need that nurturing and support - and we all can give it.

Maybe, in addition to our PLN (personal learning networks), we need to commit to a ULN (universal learning network). Open ourselves up not just to our familiar network but build further and more openly outside of our tribe and our group and our lanes of connectivity. If we each think ourselves as a mentor - even if we are just six months into our first position - and our job is to lift each other up, how powerful could that be?!?!

We can then consciously support a youth librarian idea nursery that spreads and supports the work of us all by connecting to the unconnected, the un-cohorted, the un-MLISed. We can build the network by including never-before-presenters to panels we are creating to present at CE/conferences/webinars at all levels. We can make sure our blogs are open for guest posts. We can nurture those who don't have a path to leadership or an audience and are hesitant to step forward.

Flannel Friday, Storytime Underground, Thrive Thursdays and lots of bloggers are leading the way to this kind of universal support. Our challenge is to continue and reach more deeply out to those unconnected who can use the support just as much. I know we do it. But can we do it more? Oh yeah, we're youth librarians and we all are that nursery for each other.

Image Credit: R. Villaverde, Hubble Legacy Archive, NASA

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I had the pleasure of speaking about "Curating and Cultivating a Virtual Community of Writers" with the members of the Chester County Reading Association this afternoon. I talked about the ways blogging, microblogging, other digital technologies allow teacher-writers to interact with each other worldwide.

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I had the pleasure of speaking about "Curating and Cultivating a Virtual Community of Writers" with the members of the Chester County Reading Association this afternoon. I talked about the ways blogging, microblogging, other digital technologies allow teacher-writers to interact with each other worldwide.

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A couple of weeks ago my twitter feed kept revealing a #whylib hashtag. Some of the most creative folks in my PLN were participating, so of course I clicked through and have spent quite a bit of time reading the stories of how so many of the people I admire ended up in libraries.

I didn't start out ever thinking I'd be a librarian.  The public library was always part of my life growing up.  I wrote a post for the Nerdy Book Club outlining my early experience with libraries. (Please excuse the typo in the text!)

My journey to being a librarian didn't start until I was well into my undergrad years.  Originally I was setting my sights on earning a PhD in History.  After meeting quite a few TAs who were mid thesis and having some serious conversations with them, I started to think more about options for someone graduating with a degree in History and Women's Studies.  After a bit of exploring, I starting thinking about Archival Studies...after all, my favourite bits of history were the research ones - especially those dealing with primary sources.  In the last year of my BAH I applied at UBC's program for Archival Studies.  It was not meant to be.  In hindsight it makes lots of sense, but at the time it did sting.  I took a year after graduating to take some extra classes and thought about library school.

Interestingly enough, once I decided on library school, I asked one of my History professors for a recommendation to McGill's program and she told me she thought I was making a mistake.  She had come the other way...she had been a librarian, and then went back for a PhD in History.  She told me that my love of research would be lost in library school.

She wrote me the letter and the next year I started my MLIS at McGill in Montreal.  The degree is a 2 year program that I attended full time.  The summer between first and second year I scored a job in a special library (thanks, Uncle Michael!) and pretty much decided that special libraries were where I wanted to land.  The second year of my program, I was free to take some optional courses and I decided to take a course in YA lit.  My sights started to shift.

My graduation year was 1996  -  a very different time.  This was a time that the NYC libraries came to Canada to recruit folks.  Entry level jobs were scarce in Canada and many of my classmates were moving to the States to work.  My roommates and I attended ALA in San Antonio resumes in hand hoping to score an offer before graduation.  I was still of two minds - special libraries or YA?  An offer came for each, and ultimately I followed my heart and became the YA librarian at a branch of the New York Public Library.

I landed at the perfect branch for me, which is a lucky thing when you think about the fact that there are 81 branches plus the research libraries.  My teens were little goths and punks and comic book addicts and poetry writers.  I know, right?  I had a fantastic branch manager who let me try things like zine workshops and other programs that hadn't been done in house before.

Ultimately my journey has brought me to school libraries, and I have to say this is where I think I belong.  I am lucky enough to work with a team of librarians (also a rare thing for a relatively small school) who challenge me professionally in a school where I am allowed to take risks.

At the end of the day, I am glad I didn't take my History professor's advice.  While I don't pull on the white gloves and tweezers to look at primary resources, I get to have conversations with kids about their reading and their lives.  Every now and again I get an email out of the blue from a former student who has something great to say.  I am immersed in amazing literature written for children and teens. I am exploring technology and learning about and using resources I hadn't heard of the year before.  Each day is different, and I have to say I love it.

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There is always a flurry of activity and a frisson of excitement when conferences are on the horizon (PLA! ALA! State Conference! SLJ Think Tank! ALSC Institute! Symposium! Unconference!). If you don't happen to be attending one of these opportunities to learn, share, network, it's easy to feel - well #leftbehind.

But you may not be missing as much as you think! As we have seen from recent blog posts on PLNs (Personal Learning Networks) here and here and here and here and here and (...pant, pant, pant!), you can stay right in your library at your desk and connect to a wealth of knowledge. Friendships and collegial relationships blossom through social media - win!

But perhaps you're not mainlining Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook and blog reading is kind of catch as catch can. You're only partway connected through social media but you long for connection to your peers - especially face-to-face. How do you connect and learn?

Road trip!!!!  If you can steal time a couple of times a year, hit the road and do some boots-on-the-ground library visiting and IRL colleague meeting.  It's a great way to see how another library does it good and to chat about concerns with colleagues who are or become friends.

Yesterday, a couple members of our department took a road trip to the Twin Cities to hear Rainbow Rowell speak. Along the way they met up with a colleague, toured her branch and another library, shared a good meal and most excellent conversation. What did it cost them (well, some sleep - it was a loooonnng day!)? Some quality time away from their desks and driving time - we have a library van available. It was a very reasonable cost for the library and me, as manager, to make sure these staffers could have a day away that was a mix of CE and connecting.

As a free-lance storyteller and workshop presenter, I often find myself on the road and in libraries. I make sure to connect with colleagues to share a meal, a drink or break and talk about what matters to us.  It is connectivity and comfort. I learn about libraries of all sizes, I never fail to pick up a new idea or twenty, I get ideas for blog posts and I get to hear what is happening with colleagues. Youth librarian colleagues drop by and do the same at our shop when they are passing through our town.

It doesn't cost much. It connects you up. And you learn. Now that's CE I can get behind.

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