Hello from the Poconos! This year’s Pennsylvania Library Association Conference was held in the Pocono Mountains during the peak color of the fall foliage. It was really beautiful outside, and lots of fun inside. Conference goers heard great speakers, including Ben Bizzle, Library Journal Mover & Shaker, who spoke on the importance of telling the library’s story and John Chrastka from EveryLibrary talking about energizing library advocates efforts. Like many conferences, there were workshops on topics for librarians working in different kinds of libraries, and children’s librarians enjoyed workshops and poster sessions on the social and emotional development of young children, summer STEAM camp for girls, new ideas for storytimes, and much more.
Sarah Winchowky (Free Library of Philadelphia), Christine Kroger(Carnegie Library of Beaver Falls), Pamela Bodziok (Monroeville Public Library), Nicole Henline (Monroeville Public Library) Bronwen Gamble (Reading Public Library) and Jean Barsotti (Carnegie Library of Beaver Falls) Standing panel moderator Peter Bess (Butler Area Public Library)
There was even a great session highlighting the successes of the Pennsylvania recipients of the ALSC/Disney Curiosity Creates Grant. Fellow professionals from The Carnegie Library of Beaver Falls, Monroeville Public Library, Reading Public Library and the Free Library of Philadelphia (Kensington, Lillian Marrero and Widener Branches) shared their experiences and successes in a fast-paced well attended session on Tuesday afternoon. From egg drops, bike repair, to future fashion designers, cooking show chefs, young authors to engineers, these transformative projects were based on creativity research from the Center for Childhood Creativity. If you are curious, here is a link to ALSC Resources www.ala.org/alsc/curiositycreates
Of course Exhibits are always a big hit at conferences and the ALSC Booth was one of the busiest! ALSC members from across the state stopped by to share how they use ALSC resources and picked up more brochures. The Babies Need Words Every Day posters and the booklists were all really popular. The ALSC members staffing the booth also had a chance to talk to library directors who greatly appreciated the resources (especially the competencies!), and talked to new children’s librarians about how to get involved with ALSC. Our booth was always crowded and even other vendors came over to see what was happening. We were also able to present a poster session about ALSC and all the helpful resources and wonderful members and talked at length with several potential members about all the good work that ALSC and our member do
ALSC Member, Jamie Collett and Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh presented the poster program Playing at the Library: Beyond the Family Place Workshop and we were thrilled to spy ALSC’s white paper The Importance of Play displayed with the poster.
We had a great time meeting ALSC members and librarians from across the state. If you were there, feel free to share your experiences in the comments!
Interested in hosting your own ALSC Roadshow? Check out Elizabeth Taft’s blog post from July to find out how.
**************************************************************************************
Christine Caputo is a member of the ALSC Board and the Youth Services Administrator at The Free Library of Philadelphia (PA); Paula Holmes is the ALSC Fiscal Officer and a Trustee at the Upper St. Clair Township (PA) Public Library. A special thanks to Betsy Orsburn, ALSC President, for getting us organized and Hedra Packman for staffing the table!
If you’d like to write a guest post for the ALSC Blog, please contact Mary Voors, ALSC Blog manager, at alscblog@gmail.com.