How to use this Page

This has been an odd year. Not only am I teaching college as my major job now (HTML and CSS, but I’m an adjunct so I swear I won’t be making a thing about it) but I’ve been doing a lot less of the usual talk circuit talk stuff. I just got back from CLA (California Library Association) which was a totally great time. I gave two talks (a major talk and an Ignite session which is pictured here) and won at Battledecks which was a dream come true. I enjoy the Ignite format and I’ve give three Ignite or Pecha Kucha Style talks this year.

– One about Open Library that I gave at VLA
– One at NELA about the Vermont Passport Program (and I swear I will write an article about it real soon now)
– The last one about porn driving technology adoption which is not only true it’s an amusing talk topic. That was for the CLA After Dark part of the program at a specific Ignite session called the Haters Ball including suck topics as I Hate Library Tours And You Should Too.

I also spoke to my local Rotary club about the Digital Divide and got a good conversation started in my community about what we can be doing to help the people who need help. This is all coming on the tail of some aggravated shoulder stuff that’s been keeping me away from the keyboard for the past few months except when necessary (read: for work) which is finally getting resolved. So hey how are things?

Catherine Austen’s All Good Children is on a roll. Since its release in the fall of 2011, the dystopian teen fiction title has won or been nominated for a growing list of awards, including Resource Links‘ “The Year’s Best,” the CLA Young Adult Book Award (winner), the CCBC Best Books list, YALSA’s Teen’s Top Ten (nominee) and most recently, the YALSA Best Fiction for YA (nominee—winner to be announced later this year).

 About All Good Children

It’s the middle of the twenty-first century and the elite children of New Middletown are lined up to receive a treatment that turns them into obedient, well-mannered citizens. Maxwell Connors, a fifteen-year-old prankster, misfit and graffiti artist, observes the changes with growing concern, especially when his younger sister, Ally, is targeted. Max and his best friend, Dallas, escape the treatment, but must pretend to be “zombies” while they watch their pad and hopes decay. When Max’s family decides to take Dallas with them into the unknown world beyond New Middletown’s borders, Max’s creativity becomes an unexpected bonus rather than a liability.

Get your copy of All Good Children.

Visit Catherine Austen’s website to check out all her books for children, middle-school readers and teens.

We’re thrilled to announce that Catherine Austen has won the Canadian Library Association(CLA) Young Adult Book Award for 2012 for All Good Children. 

The Young Adult Book Award recognizes an author of an “outstanding Canadian English-language work of fiction (novel or collection of short stories) that appeals to young adults between the ages of 13 and 18.” Previous winners include Kenneth Oppel, Lesley Livingston, Allan Stratton, Martha Brooks, William Bell, Shyam Selvadurai, Miriam Toews, and Polly Horvath.

Here’s what the CLA had to say:

“In the near future of All Good Children, corporate towns proliferate and try to control the lives of everyone who lives in them. In Middleville, a school vaccination program has been instituted that turns girls and boys into compliant and obedient good children. Catherine Austen takes us on a roller-coaster ride of humour and suspense as, through the eyes of teen artist and prankster Maxwell Conner, we experience the resistance of his family and a close friend to the “zombification” program. Austen’s novel explores the nature and value of creativity, individuality, and non-conformity with memorable characters and a gripping plot.” Read the full press release.

Congratulations also go out to this year’s honour books and authors: Karma, by Cathy Ostlere (Penguin Canada) and This Dark Endeavour, by Kenneth Oppel (HarperCollins). A complete list of the 2011 finalists, as well as information on past winners, is available on the CLA web site.

Learn more about All Good Children (and order your print or ebook copy!) on the Orca Book Publishers website.

Talking about the digital divide in Connecticut is a lot different from talking about it in Texas, or even Vermont. Unlike most states I’ve looked at, Connecticut really doesn’t have a large population of people who live in an area where they can’t get broadband. I’m sure it has the same numbers of offline people, generally speaking, but whatever their reasons for being offline are, they’re not for lack of access. I admit, I played this for laughs a bit at my CLA since I know that people aren’t going to confuse broadband access with technological know-how and will still see that there is work to be done.

All my talks went well. Here’s what I’ve been up to recently

• Last Thursday I was on a panel with some interesting people including the soon-to-be-president of ALA Molly Raphael. We answered some provocative questions about the future of libraries and mostly had a great time.
• Friday I gave my talk about developing a technology curriculum for libraries. For those of you used to my usual stuff, this was a departure. Not heavily attended–it was in one of the last timeslots of the conference–but I was pleased with it. If you’re considering a technology curriculum, you might be interested in my short set of notes/slides. I got to present with Anna Fahey-Flynn who is Curriculum Development Librarian at Boston Public and it was really interesting to see how their tech instruction program is coming together.
• Over the weekend I walked around in the sun in Massachusetts and then headed to CT for the CT Library Association conference. Before attending the conference I was interviewed for public acess TV in Manhattan about the Google Books project and copyright and a few other things. No idea when this will go live, but if you think you’ve seen me on tv talking about Google Books, you may have.
• Tuesday I gave a talk about myths about the digital divide, similar to my Texas talk but with some local examples.

As usual, I also got to attend some great presentations including a talk by BPL and the Internet Archive [at MLA] about how they’re working together to provide digital access to library content via Open Library. This may be a personal thing, but I’m always excited when libraries test boundaries and tell us “We checked with our lawyers and they think this is an acceptable level of risk.” I also saw a CMS smackdown/comparison [Drupal vs. WordPress] by Polly-Alida Farrington and Shanon Clapp which was full of good information and delivered with a friendly “you can do it!” approach. I also saw John Palfrey’s closing keynote talking about the digital divide and some of what Harvard’s Library Lab has been up to, and the DPLA and other things. I’ve mostly seen him in contexts where he was talking to non-librarians so it was fun to see him explaining a lot of these big idea projects on my home turf.

I’m home for a bit, back to teaching my Know Your Mac classes, staffing drop-in time, filling in at the public library and waiting for my book to be in print [this week, here's hoping] and then travelling to Portland at the end of the month for the Oregon Virtual Reference Summit.

Speaking at library and library-type conferences seems to mostly keep me busy for March – May and October – November. This week I’ll be headed down to Danvers MA for MLA and then on to Stamford CT for CLA. In both cases I’m speaking but also trying to attend as much of the conferences as I can given my night owl tendencies. Here’s where I’ll be, please say hi if you see me, or come to one of my talks.

MLA – Thursday the 28th at 1 pm – I’ll be on the Future of Libraries, or, What the Heck are You Thinking? panel along with Scot Colford, Kieth Michael Fiels and Maureen Sullivan which is sure to be interesting and probably fun.
• MLA – Friday the 29th at 10:30 I’ll be talking about Curriculum Development for Public Libraries along with Anna Fahey-Flynn from BPL. Sort of a new direction and I’m looking forward to it.
• CLA – Tuesday May 3rd at 2:40 I’ll be talking about the myths we believe about the digital divide and offer some researched based statistics as to what’s really going on.

In june I’ll be doing a talk for NELA-ITS and heading over to Oregon for the Oregon Virtual Reference Summit in The Dalles. This is all a good way to channel fidgets since I’m all “EEeeeeee” waiting for my book to come out. Thanks in advance for saying hello.

I’ll be giving a talk at the Library Camp pre-conference thingie that the Emerging Technology Interest Group is putting on the day before CLA up in Montreal. If you’ve got $40 and are in the area, I’d suggest stopping by, there are going to be a lot of cool people there. John Fink and Jason Hammond will also be giving talks in the morning.