Pursuing excellence for library service to children
How is your Children’s Room looking lately? Is it appealing to the eye, inviting guests to explore? Does it feel innovative, educational and yet playful? If you don’t happen to have a huge budget but are looking for a quick way to add some flair in the Children’s Room, try a flannel wall!
You hear a lot about gratitude this time of year. As an ALSC member, I am so grateful that ALSC is continually developing materials to aid me in better serving the diverse communities in which I live and work. The online resources available under the Professional Tools for Librarians Serving Youth section of the ALSC website have grown, and now include an additional section under Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. Building on the “Supporting Libraries in Today’s Changing Environment” document created earlier this year, this new piece is called Serving Diverse Communities. It contains a list of resources intended to help librarians support children and families through uncertain times. While no means exhaustive, the list is wide-ranging in content. A printable pdf is available. Trying to create a display of reassuring reads for kids? Booklists such as Unity. Kindness. Peace. are included under Book & Media Lists. Searching for the best…
Every library visit should be special and memorable. So how do we add more to the library experience when our program schedule is full, our staff are busy, and our room is already overflowing with toys? One suggestion is to create new, drop-in experiences for patrons around monthly themes.
A concerted effort by librarians in my school district, Williamsville Central Schools, to upgrade our library facilities finally bore fruit when I was given the given the opportunity to renovate the library at Heim Middle School, where I have been the librarian for more than twenty years. I was fortunate enough to be able to select both new furniture and carpeting. The furniture in the library was original to the opening of the school in 1965 (first named North Forest Junior High), and the carpeting was from the late 1990s. In thinking about the future of the library, planning for flexible use of the space as well as creating a variety of zones for various activities (e.g.: class space, quiet reading, collaborative small group work space) was paramount. The process has taken close to an entire calendar year, and the results have been amazing! Feedback from our students and staff have been…
Have you thought about visiting Portland, Oregon? Perhaps in November for Wordstock?
We get class visit requests often here in Nevada County, CA. We have nine school districts, nine special or charter schools, and 4 private schools scattered around our rural county, where 68% of residents live in unincorporated areas. It makes it really special for kids to get to the library, so I feel a lot of pressure to make their school visit great. The image above is an easy one – make a special display focused on the classes’ interests or recent project. I spent a while researching good class visit templates, but unlike storytimes, there aren’t a lot of them out there. So here are a few ideas. I’d love to hear what you do in the comments! Preschool and Kindergarten visits: My goal with these is to get kids feeling like the library is a place for them. I have some quick sketches featuring different things you…
We’ve all heard of toddler and preschool dance parties, but babywearing dance parties are starting to be a huge hit too!
Do you want a child to have the gift of reading, singing, playing, writing and talking over the holidays? Of course the given is for a librarian to give books around the holidays, but you can take that a step farther. Here are some fun and cost efficient early literacy gift ideas.