Libraries seeking to share their stories and raise public awareness are encouraged to apply for the 2011 Scholastic Library Publishing National Library Week Grant. The library that develops the best public awareness campaign using the National Library Week theme will be awarded $3,000 to promote its library and library services.

All proposals must use the 2011 National Library Week theme, Create your own story @ your library, which incorporates The Campaign for America’s Libraries’ @ your library brand, on any and all promotional and publicity material supporting National Library Week activities. Guidelines for using the brand are available on the campaign website.

This year’s application deadline is Oct. 1, 2010. National Library Week is April 10-16, 2011. A grant application form and guidelines are available on the Scholastic Library Publishing National Library Week Grant website. Information is also available from the ALA Public Information Office. Telephone: (800) 545-2433, ext. 2148. E-mail: mmcfarlane@ala.org.

The complete news release is available via ALAnews at American Libraries.

The 2011 ALSC/Robert F. Sibert Informational Book Award Committee is asking the ALSC membership to submit titles for consideration. The Sibert Award is presented annually to the author, author/illustrator, co-authors or author and illustrator of the most distinguished informational book published during the preceeding year. Honor books may be named.

Informational books are defined as those written and illustrated to present, organize, and interpret documentable factual material for children from birth through age fourteen. Poetry and traditional literature are not eligible. Authors and illustrators must be U.S. citizens or residents. Other terms and criteria can be found on the ALSC website: http://www.ala.org/ala/mgrps/divs/alsc/awardsgrants/bookmedia/sibertmedal/
sibertterms/sibertmedaltrms.cfm

The 2011 Sibert Commitee calls on ALSC members to submit titles for consideration. Please remember, only informational books from the 2010 publishing year are under consideration for this award. Suggestions will be solicited and accepted throughout the year.

Please submit your suggestions to the committee chair, Barbara Brand at brandb@jocolibrary.org.

Barbara Brand, 2011 Robert F. Sibert Informational Book Award Committee Chair
Youth Services Manager
Johnson County Library
Shawnee Mission, KS
913-495-2459

The United States Constitution Day is on September 17. To celebrate, all Kindergarten through 12th grade students are invited to participate in the 2010 Constitution Day Poster Contest. Entrants must create a poster that demonstrates how the freedoms embodied in the U.S. Constitution affect their daily lives. Entries will be judged on both artistic merit and relevance to the U.S. Constitution. Entries must be post-marked or uploaded by October 1, 2010. For more information, visit www.ConstitutionFacts.com.

“The Graduate School of Library and Information Science at Dominican University received a National Leadership Grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) for a three-year research study to answer the question: do public library summer reading programs impact student achievement? Conducted between 2006 and 2009, the study has its roots in programming that began in the late 1800s…”

Click here to read more about the study.

As stated on the American Library Association’s Spectrum Scholarship Overview page, “Librarianship is one of the most diverse professions you can find. Today’s librarians are information specialists, Internet guides, educators, public administrators, children’s services specialists, reader’s advisors–the choices and career directions are boundless. However, it is a reality that library staff do not always reflect the communities they serve. Spectrum specifically addresses the underrepresentation of librarians of color within the current workforce.”

ALSC contributed $2,500 to the initial Spectrum Fundraising Initiative in 1999; and now in 2010, ALSC has expanded its commitment to the Spectrum Scholarship Program with the establishment of the ALSC Spectrum Scholarship. ALSC is sponsoring one Spectrum Scholar interested in library service to children each year through funding from the Frederic G. Melcher Endowment. In addition, ALSC provides complimentary student membership and active opportunities for involvement and leadership to all Spectrum Scholars interested in children’s services. Sylvia Franco has been selected as the 2010-2011 ALSC Spectrum Scholar.

Spectrum provides a one-time, non-renewable $5,000 scholarship award paid in two $2,500 installments directly to the recipient. Recipients are announced at the ALA Annual Conference. The installments are awarded in September and January.

To be eligible for a Spectrum Scholarship:

• Applicant must be a citizen or permanent resident of the U.S. or Canada.
• Applicant must be American Indian/Alaska Native, Asian, Black/African American, Hispanic/Latino or Native Hawaiian/Other Pacific Islander.
• Applicant must attend an ALA-accredited graduate program in library and information studies or an ALA-recognized NCATE School Library Media program.
• Applicant shall have completed no more than a third of the credit requirements toward her/his MLIS or school library media degree at the time of award, June 1st.
• Applicant must be enrolled in an accredited program and begin school no later than September 1st or the Fall Semester immediately following the award.
• Applicants may have full or part time status.

Applications for ALA Scholarships are accepted annually from mid-October to March. For more information about the ALA Scholarship Program, visit http://www.ala.org/ala/educationcareers/scholarships/index.cfm.

For more information about the Spectrum Presidential Initiative or to make an online donation, visit http://spectrum.ala.org.

Need some resources to encourage new parents and caregivers to read to their babies? The ALSC Born to Read Initiative includes some helpful talking points and resources. The direct URL is http://www.ala.org/ala/mgrps/divs/alsc/initiatives/borntoread/resources.cfm. Check it out.

Where is the line between having a balanced collection and serving the needs of your patrons?

I am a firm believer in representing all points of view and having a balanced children’s collection at my library.  In a perfect world, my budget would be $100,000,000.00 and space would be unlimited and I could give everyone access to everything and let my patrons decide what they want to expose themselves to.

Unfortunately, my budget is much, much less than $100,000,000.00 and the shelf space in my building definitely has limits.

So where do we draw the line?

Okay, let’s put all issues of religion, ethnicity, and politics aside.

Say my library serves a population that consists largely of people who love puppies.

There are definitely some people who love kitties, hamsters, or parakeets, but the majority of the people we serve love puppies, and we get many more requests for books about puppies than we get for any of the other animals.  I want to give my patrons what they want, to make the collection useful for them, but I also want to keep my collection balanced.  Should I buy books about kitties, hamsters, and parakeets for every puppy-themed book that I purchase?

What if I don’t have the funds to do that?  My patrons would check out 100 puppy books, but if I bought 25 puppy books, 25 kitty books, 25 hamster books, and 25 parakeet books, the puppy books would fly off the shelves and the others would just sit there.  With budgets as tight as they are, how can I justify purchasing 75 books that might only check out a handful of times?  Not to mention that the tax-payers of my community pay for these books.  If they want puppy books and they ask for them, shouldn’t I do my best to fill their needs?

On the other hand, what about the people who love kitties or hamsters in my community?  If I have 90 puppy books and only a few books about kitties and hamsters, will they wonder why they’re not as well represented at the library?  They pay taxes, too.  And what about people who love puppies but want to learn a little more about parakeets?  If people who love puppies don’t have access to information and stories about kitties, hamsters, and parakeets, how can they expand their minds?  And what about the people who haven’t given a lot of thought about animals and turn to the library to make up their minds?

I definitely want materials that represent these different animals in my collection, but is it okay to skew the collection towards puppies if that’s how my population is skewed?

Now, substitute religions, ethnicities, sexual orientations, or political views for the animals mentioned above.

What do you think?  Where is the line between providing access to all points of view and providing the materials that our patrons are asking for?  Since we do have limited budgets and limited shelf space, we have to draw a line somewhere.  I’m going to venture that the line will be different for every community.

Where is your line?

–
Abby Johnson, Children’s Manager
New Albany-Floyd County Public Library
New Albany, IN
(You can also visit me at abbythelibrarian.com!)

August 30th is the deadline for The Exquisite Prompt Write It, Film It Video Contest.

There are seven prompts from which to chose. These prompts are inspired by authors of The Exquisite Corpse Adventure. As stated on The Library Congress‘ Read.gov’s The Exquisite Corpse Adventure page, “an Exquisite Corpse is an old game in which people write a phrase on a sheet of paper, fold it over to conceal part of it and pass it on to the next player to do the same. The game ends when someone finishes the story, which is then read aloud.”

The contest prompts are Silent Movie, Science Fiction, Animation, Superhero Action, Family Story, Video Diary, and Cooking Show. Each of the seven authors offers a page with the following sections: “The Inspiration,” “The Prompt,” “Write It,” “Film It,” and “Resources.”

The contest is open to kids, ages 7 to 18, with three competition levels:

• Level I: ages 7-10
• Level II: ages 11-13
• Level III: ages 14-18

Children may work individually or in pairs. A submitted film’s maximum length is 3 minutes. For the complete contest rules, the prompts and more information on how to enter, visit either AdLit.org (http://www.adlit.org/) or Reading Rockets (http://www.readingrockets.org/), education websites of WETA Washington DC.

I’m sure I’m not the first to blog about this (and I certainly won’t be the last), but the release of a new study about Summer Reading impacts has me churning with ideas and possibilities. The GLIS at Dominican University has some pretty good data to prove what we have known for years—children’s librarians are doing significant, important work. How we get leaders – in the library world, in the financial world, in the education departments of our governments – to recognize and support this is what I see as our biggest hurdle. The executive summary has a few recommendations, which I would hope someday to see come true. The first is “Recognizing that public libraries play a significant role in helping to close the achievement gap in school performance”. Read the full report (executive summary is included in this) here.

So, as you sigh over how hard you are working to make all those grumpy parents happy about your Summer Reading Club, as you answer yet another question about how the prizes are awarded, as you pull one more copy of Geronimo Stilton off the shelf, remember what we are doing. We are as important as all those teachers who make more money than us and get summers off.** We are providing FUN when it comes to reading. We are impacting the lives of children who may not have books at home. We are changing lives, and we are doing it for less money than most summer school programs. Just something to chew on as you relinquish your summer vacations and think of great holiday locations that scream “Autumn”.

**No offense to teachers. I am glad that they are there doing their jobs and getting well paid, and I know that “summer off” is a relative term. But in many areas, they do make more money and get better benefits than a typical public librarian.

Does your library have a LEGO Club? Lots of public libraries do. Abbe Klebanoff, children’s librarian at Radnor Memorial Library in Wayne, PA, wrote about her library’s LEGO Club in an informative 7/01/2009 School Library Journal article.
Tips for Starting a LEGO Club include

• Establish Ground Rules.
• Have a Theme.
• Show and Tell.
• Clean Up as a Group.

My five-year-old and I will attend our library’s LEGO Club on August 17. I’ll tell you how it goes. In the meantime, please share your thoughts about or experiences of having one at your library.

Thanks!
Teresa Walls