The American Library Associaiton’s Public Information Office (PIO) has a great new podcast about the upcoming El día de los niños/El día de los libros on their blog, Visibility @ your library (http://www.pio.ala.org/visibility/?p=577). 
The podcast features Linda Mays, ALSC program officer, who discusses Día as an “opportunity to bring attention to the importance and well-being [...]

If you are in the San Francisco area or need an excuse to go there, consider the upcoming Effie Lee Morris Lecture. The 13th lecture will feature Pat Mora speaking about Bookjoy: The Zing of Writing. The lecture will be held on Tuesday, June 2, 2009 at 6:00 p.m. in the Main Library, Lower Level, [...]

I just finished reading The Child that Books Built: a Life in Reading by Francis Spufford (Metropolitan Books, 2002).  In it, a self-described book addict details the intense and visceral thrall in which books have held him since the age of six.  Books, and his relationship to them, made him who he is.
Spufford’s particular love [...]

Friends and colleagues look at me like I’m mad when I tell them that I spent 12 hours overnight in the library with a bunch of 4th grade boys on Friday. “The Library Sleepover,” as it has been dubbed, morphed out of an 8th grade right-of-passage into a fundraiser for our school.
Like many independent [...]

This would be self-promotion because I wrote the new edition except that the manual is available free for all. The Texas State Library has published an updated (3rd edition) of the standard weeding manual which outlines the CREW method for weeding collections. One thing I tried to do was include more specifically about weeding children’s [...]

by Adriana Dominguez
Hello everyone! I was thrilled to listen to the interview with Dr. Jamie Campbell Naidoo on the work that he is doing to reach out to Latino children, and inspired to take advantage of Teresa Walls’ gracious invitation to participate in this forum to let you know about my own outreach efforts in [...]

Download the podcast.
Episode 9

Episode 9: Outreach to Latino Populations
The Latinos are the fastest growing minority population in the United States. Dr. Jamie Campbell Naidoo predicts that within 20 to 30 years, they are going to be the majority. In this 24-minute podcast, ALSC member Dr. Naidoo discusses

what led him to research and teach diversity and [...]

Hear about the 2009 ALSC book and media awards from the committee chairs themselves through new podcasts by Sarah Long, the executive director of the North Suburban Library System. 
The podcasts are available on the system’s Library Beat Web site, and feature interviews about the Newbery Award with Committee Chair Rose Treviño; the Caldecott Award with Committee Chair Nell Colburn; and [...]

posted by Teresa Walls
As a child, I had subscriptions to Ranger Rick and Cricket, both of which I enjoyed immensely. I don’t recall a children’s periodical collection at my local library when I was growing up. Lately, my son and I have been checking out the periodicals at our local branch library. They have a [...]

posted by Teresa Walls
Have you read How Computer Games Help Children Learn by David Williamson Shaffer? I have just begun. Already, there is plenty of food for thought, especially regarding games that allow children to role-play, moving beyond rote memorization. I imagine many of us who became librarians like trivia and random facts. But, really, [...]