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We know this. We have been working with schools for decades and our summer reading programs are an integral part of our service to customers. With the advancement of research in summer slide, and libraries role in reserving the adverse effects of summer slide, we have new colleagues at our table. One of our most stalwart and enlightened partners are the folks at the National Summer Learning Association.  This year their annual conference is in my home town!! The speakers promise to be informative and inspiring. Join us and find new partnerships at every turn.

Our colleges at Urban Libraries Council ULC, partnered with the National Summer Learning Association, to collect a significant amount of information about the many innovative and meaningful ways in which public libraries are providing summer learning opportunities for youth and their families; contributing to closing the achievement gap and mitigating the summer learning slide. Both partners would also like to thank the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) who made this work possible.

Read more about these great summer learning programs at libraries across the country.

• Summer Learning Challenge at Chicago Public Library, which was just awarded the first-ever Founders Award by the National Summer Learning Association!
• Literacy Leaders at the New York Public Library

• READy for the Grade at the New Haven Free Public Library

• Science in the Summer at the District of Columbia Public Library

• Summer R.E.A.D.ing at the Broward County Library

• Summer Spark! at the St. Paul Public Library

• Worth Reading at the Fort Worth Library

• Read! By 4th at the Free Library of Philadelphia

ULC will be highlighting the innovative summer learning programming developed by public libraries during NSLA’s Summer Changes Everything National Conference held October 12-14, 2015, in Baltimore. ULC will be hosting Schools + Libraries = Power to Leverage Summer Learning, a working session demonstrating how libraries and schools can leverage resources and develop partnerships to support summer learning initiatives. ULC members Chicago Public Library and Virginia Beach Public Library will also host sessions highlighting their programs. Click here to learn more about the Summer Changes Everything library programming and ULC’s special registration discount!

The post LIBRARIES ARE IN THE LEARNING BUSINESS!! appeared first on ALSC Blog.

It was a wonderful time to be in San Francisco. Libraries, a cultural embodiment of inclusion and acceptance, happily shared in the celebrations honoring equality. In this past year, with our focus on diversity in all its aspects, materials, services and our own ranks, it was particularly fitting that we would be at the center of this latest piece of good news. Rainbows were everywhere.

I am struck again and again by the passion of our members. Library work is more a calling than a profession and in this digital age, our work is more vital and less understood. In my presidential year, I was particularly gratified that children’s librarians are embracing their role in helping families determine how and what media to use to help children learn and thrive. The leadership discussion of the ALSC white paper on media mentors was a highlight of the conference for me. The awards ceremonies are always grand and I am always impressed with our members desire to discover the best of the best of what is published for children each year.

My president’s program, MORE TO THE CORE, focused on the premise that excellent informational books are created, loved and read with the same alacrity of our most loved fiction. Words and images combined to ignite imagination and inspiration continue to move the next generation to greater empathy and understanding of our world. We heard from both a creator, award winning illustrator and author Melissa Sweet and practitioner, RIF’s Judy Cheatham. Both speakers’ passion for great literature for children was evident and affirming.

Great books are at the root of children’s ability to understand and empathize with others. That ability gives us hope and moves us all forward to the better world we imagine. This June in San Francisco we were there as we moved a little closer together. I like to think there is a great children’s book waiting somewhere in the imagination of some child that will describe this time for others to remember, imagine and understand.

The post Somewhere over the Rainbow appeared first on ALSC Blog.

It is hard to imagine that Annual is right around the corner. This year in San Francisco is particularly interesting for those of us who love children’s books. The much anticipated awards banquet is always a highlight, of course, but we are taking a look at awards from a different lens. The ALSC preconference will feature the honor winners of the ALSC media awards. Often the silver medals of Newbery, Caldecott, Sibert, Geisel, etc. are enduring favorites that contribute to our cannon of children’s literature though not as widely known.

The best of children’s literature stands up to the same critical rigor as all great literature does. Plot, character, setting, conflict, metaphor, meaning, exquisite language and lasting insight are integral to those books we offer to our children and families again and again, year after year, generation after generation. We know too that context, the child reader’s context, will shape the place a piece of literature holds in their life. Context is created by the experiences that child reader has outside the story that help the story have lasting meaning and connection to the reader. Often the most important contextual piece of a story is the person in the child reader’s life who shared the book with them for the first time.

I was recently asked in an interview for the top three books every home library should have. I replied that parents and caregivers should fill their home libraries with their own favorite childhood books; books read aloud to them as children, the first book they read “on their own”, the first novel they read cover to cover without skipping any parts (mine was HARRIET THE SPY). These iconic books will take their place in their children’s lives magically for it is magic; to share a book you loved as a child with a child you love. It doesn’t get any better than that.

It is a different kind of magic to stand with our best of the best at the awards banquet and share their triumph, hear the speeches, learn where they were when they got “the call.” Yet even at the height of the accolades and the glamour, the true purpose of all our work is with us. We remember ourselves as children, absorbed in a book that changed our lives.

The post Meaning in the Medals appeared first on ALSC Blog.

It is hard to describe to those who do not understand libraries, who haven’t been in a library in years, the value of the public library today.

We are community anchors.

Libraries are the center of life, a place of aspiration and hope.

Sometimes that can sound like rhetoric, even to me.

In Baltimore we have 22 libraries. One of them is at the corner of Pennsylvania and North Avenue. It is one of our largest branches and one of our most beautiful. The community it serves is one of our most disadvantaged. Every day the library is open, people of the community come to the library to use computers, attend baby storytimes and relax after school and work. Monday, April 27th was no different. By two o’clock the library had customers. Children, adults and teens were in the library along with staff when the violence that was taking hold in our city came literally right to the door. The brave and committed staff of the Pennsylvania Avenue Branch kept everyone safe that day. That is remarkable, but what is even more remarkable is that every single staff member showed up for work that very next day, to open the doors again at 10 AM.

When I began working in 1988, the branch manager of the Pennsylvania Avenue Branch was Betty Boulware. She was a dignified and statuesque woman of tremendous kindness and determination. She was diligent in keeping that branch looking its best and the staff busy with programs. Betty believed that it was even more critical to offer a beautiful, bustling library in a community that had so many challenges. Betty understood that if we gave the community something truly beautiful; they would come to love it and honor it.

When the smoke cleared on Tuesday morning, April 28^th, the National Guard was in Baltimore. They had come under cover of darkness, amid fire and glass strewn streets. Glass was everywhere. It seemed that every window along some streets was smashed. Local Businesses were in ruins. The CVS across the street from our branch burned all night, hampered by some punching holes in the fire fighters hoses. When the library opened at 10 AM that morning, our CEO, Carla Hayden, came herself to help staff put the sign on the door. It is a glass door. The whole front of the branch is glass and remained intact.

I am greatly saddened by the events that have happened in my city. There is so much work that needs to be done on the road to justice and to making Baltimore the city we who love it believe it can be. It is daunting but I am steadied and renewed by the vison of our branch, its untouched glass windows glinting in that Tuesday sun: an anchor, a center of life, a place of aspiration and hope.

(Photos courtesy of blogger)

The post Tuesday Morning appeared first on ALSC Blog.

Literature lovers are gathering in Washington DC , at the DC Public Library to hear Brian Selznick’s May Hill Arbuthnot lecture. It is the 45th lecture and he joins an august bunch of authors, illustrators, children’s literature experts and scholars that have shared the podium to provide “a significant contribution to the field of children’s literature. “ Looking through the past honorees, one has a sense of the vast and changing world of children’s literature.

Established at a point of high consciousness of changing times (1969), this lecture has remained rooted in the cannon of our work. In its implementation, the Arbuthnot honors both creator and space. Part of the process, as we know, is the application of host institutions that vie for a chance to showcase a renowned figure in children’s literature in their own world of work: city, town, university and in one notable case, a farm. ¹

For all its academic trappings, a look at this lecture series brings to mind the most important connection of all: child and book. This synergy of reader and creator is celebrated in an integrated way, creating for all who attend a world of shared experience and history in the making, fueled by a mutual passion for and the ability of children to connect to books in meaningful and life changing ways.

If you can, come. It is a chance to be part of history, our history. No matter the speaker, the subject or the venue, it is always an event full of delightful surprises and discovery and joy. We are reminded again that really talented, committed, smart people write for and care about children. This is a wondrous thing worthy of the pomp and care it requires, the hard work of all involved: the committee, the staff at the venue, the speaker, and the publishers. Come, you deserve it.

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¹ The 2009 lecture by Walter Dean Myers was held in Clinton, TN hosted by the Children’s Defense Fund and the Alex Haley Library at Haley Farm.

The post History in the Making appeared first on ALSC Blog.

We all know that when it comes to stories, children need both mirrors and windows to understand their place in the wide world.

This never ending winter has given my life a different pace. Curtailed from Saturdays scheduled with errands and voice lessons, sewing lessons and play dates, my children and I have been reading aloud. They are both independent readers and have been for some time. My son is 16 and my daughter turns 11 this month but the joys of reading aloud are even richer than when they were little. Our options are more varied and their views of the world are wider. As librarians we have always known and advocated for reading aloud to older children but at least for me, making the time has been a challenge.

My pledge is that after the snow melts, I will still suggest and make space for Saturday morning readings that start our day with ideas, passion and a look into other worlds. This ability to glimpse into other worlds and gain greater empathy for others is the kernel of our concern and commitment to diversity in all its forms in our profession. While this is a personalized call to action and one I tend to avoid, having time to share books with my children in this amazing and profound way, reading aloud, makes me grateful for our public library and all its offerings. I really have everything I need in our literary backyard.

For our families, El día de los niños/El día de los libros (Children’s Day/Book Day), celebrates the stories in our communities. Our libraries are the perfect place of acceptance, inclusion and harmony. While we celebrate Día on one special day, April 30th, its name also stands for Diversity in Action and through this work, we reaffirm our daily commitment to ensure that all families have access to diverse books, languages and cultures. Without access to stories from other cultures, places and passions, we are a lesser world.

The post The Joys of Reading through Windows appeared first on ALSC Blog.

We know diversity matters. It is a part of our strategic plan, it is a major focus of our work and it is critical to our customers and our communities. Figuring out the best way to help increase diversity awareness in our communities and having this reflected in our libraries isn’t always easy. Libraries have been at the forefront of realizing the value of diverse content. Our communities are changing and it is challenging to build content that really reflects the world we live in today. It starts with our collections and our collections are dependent on what is available from publishers. ALSC has taken up this charge by organizing a dialogue around diversity with publishers in Chicago as part of the Midwinter meeting.

On the heels of ALSC’s invitational dialogue on diversity in publishing, Sunday, February 1, 2015 – 1:00pm to 2:30pm McCormick Place West W183b there will be an opportunity for all interested attendees to learn more about what we can do, as children’s libraries, to increase diversity awareness in our communities and to lay the groundwork for a more promising future

Join us! Bring your ideas, examples of what works where you live and help us create a real exchange between publishing and library work and further define what diversity means to us as a profession. Together is where change happens. The time has come.

By the time you read this I will in Beijing, China. Our fabulous Executive Director, Aimee Strittmatter, and I have been invited to speak about American children’s library work at the Chinese Library Association Conference. Our whirlwind visit will include a tour of the National Children’s Library, the Children’s Library of Beijing and another location intriguingly referred to as Juvenile & Children Reading Experience Wonderland. We also hope to see the Forbidden City, the Great Wall and maybe even (please, please, please) a panda cub or two.

Our Chinese counterparts are particularly interested in learning more about our Caldecott Award and the role that libraries play in making that award the catalyst for the creation of and celebration of great children’s picture books it has become. In 2009, China inaugurated their own award for children’s literature called the Zikai Award named for a famous Chinese cartoonist and modeled after the Caldecott . It is exhilarating to learn of the far reach of our distinguished and highly regarded awards. I know how hard our members work to ensure that every year the criteria and integrity of the award is maintained and the best books find their way, literally, into the world.

Saturday morning we are meeting to discuss children’s reading with some Chinese children’s literature experts. I look forward to discovering the common threads we will see in our respective “great books for children.” Is excellence in literature for children the same in every language and culture? We are always more alike than we imagine but the value of seeing life in another country also gives perspective to our own.

Many of the challenges faced by our countries are shared. The quality of education, the desire to provide the best opportunities for children and their families with limited public resources; these are human concerns, not American ones. Libraries play a role in that work not just in America, where personal freedom is assumed, but perhaps libraries play an even more critical role in communities vastly different from our own.

I can’t wait to share what we learn in China with our members back in the states. My hope is that our time will give important insights into the value of what we continue to hold dear. Our best resource remains each other, those of us who do this work, wherever in the world we are.

This month children’s librarians from all over the country will gather in Oakland, California for the biennial ALSC Institute. There are educational sessions including libraries’ roles in early education, better ways to connect our customers to information, tips on how to be at the “community table” and even, this time around, a trip to fairy land. It is an exciting and inspiring event; to be among so many people who share our passion and commitment.

The greatest value of the Institute though is the space and time to really connect to our colleagues. In the busy worlds of libraries today with the competing demands of customers, stakeholders and administration, made more urgent by shrinking budgets, most of us have little time to consider what drives us to this work. A weekend sharing knowledge and energy is just the thing to recharge.

Even if you can’t get to California, reaching out to like-minded colleagues is a wonderful way to find energy you are sure you just don’t have. ALSC is built on a tradition of mentorship and the street is gleefully both ways. In our modern environment of 24/7 virtual connections, even time zones can’t keep mentor from mentee and vice versa.

It isn’t always easy to get our heads around mentoring. Sometimes we feel we can’t possibly have anything of value to say to another professional. We haven’t been doing this long enough or we have been doing it too long. We aren’t experts. There are things we just don’t know. These perceived gaps of excellence are the very steps to connecting in meaningful ways to others. Ask a question. Offer to go to lunch. Send an email. Tweet passionately or Facebook someone who intrigues you. All of us can name a person who guided us in our lives. It all began, long ago or just last week, with a conversation. So speak up in whatever way works for you.

Mentoring is like friendship. To find one you need to be one. That is the real truth of it. While those of us in California may come away with new ways of thinking about our work, hopefully we will also come away with at least one new friend be it mentor or mentee. We are everywhere. You don’t have to be in fairy land to find us.

I encourage all of you to check out the ALSC Emerging Leaders report (Ask, Assess, Advocate:Demonstrating the Value of Youth Services) which articulates an important question for us. How do we accurately assess the value of children’s services in libraries?

Many of us must justify our services to our communities and stakeholders when we secure our budgets, write grants or report to City Hall and very often we are asked for more than numbers. This is good news. We know we are more than the sum of our parts. Numbers, outputs, only tell part of the story. The real value we have is in our impact in the lives of our families we serve.

We all have stories of this impact. These are the moments we hold dear: watching our customers grow from preschool storytime participant to confident young reader to successful student. In research, this ability to change behavior and influence future behavior is called an outcome. Outputs are what we do but outcomes are the reasons why we do what we do.

Our most recent Community Forum tackled this issue. How do we accurately access our “value”? Is our valued shaped by our communities? Is there a model of valuation that makes sense for us to adopt? It was a rich discussion and it is clear that many of us struggle to define our value. We all know that proving our worth, defining the outcomes we hope to achieve and then showing we achieve them, is critical to our success and future. I urge you to experience the discussion in the archives and to join in the discussion. We are counting on you.