The 2022-23 charge for the AASL/ALSC/YALSA Interdivisional Committee on School and Public Library Cooperation is to provide strategies for how youth services libraries can work together in the face of the current climate of book challenges, concrete examples of how school and public libraries can support each other as we stand up for the need for EDI materials and environments, and useful products to include resources and talking points. Our committee is working to curate information to provide a toolkit of resources for youth services librarians in all settings. Since reconsideration challenges are often conducted according to state-specific laws and regulations and determinations from these should be for adherence to selection policies, we’d like to crowdsource the details of both types of policies. Strong selection and reconsideration policies aligned between school and public settings should present a united, transparent front to local communities and hopefully this resource enhances access to such…
Category: Blogger AASL/ALSC/YALSA Interdivisional Committee
Hats
Hats. I wear many of them. Literal hats of winter because in New York it gets cold. But other hats too. Teen librarian, school librarian, media literacy skills teacher, colleague, friend, relative, potential problem predictor, in-house worrier, tech-trouble-shooter, mask/face covering supplier, hand sanitizer distributor, and so many more hats.
The Ups and Downs of Transformation
I have always had the tendency to apply idioms and proverbial phrasing to the “bumps in the road” encountered while human-ing (I also make verbs out of lots of things). It is one of the ways I’m able to persist in difficult times and have had to rely heavily on this during a year where words like “challenging,” “chaotic,” and “concerning” are all surface level descriptors of 2020, a truly transformative year. Yes, I mean transformative.
Long (Inter) Division
Besides having the longest committee name in ALSC, the AASL/ALSC/YALSA Interdivisional Committee on School/Public Library Cooperation has an important task: to foster partnerships between library workers in all types of library agencies. Consisting of members from all three of ALA’s youth-serving divisions (AASL, ALSC, and YALSA), the Interdivisional Committee’s unique make-up is ideal for the collaborative work we do. This year, the Interdivisional Committee has received our charge from the AASL, ALSC and YALSA Presidents-Elect. We are to develop a shared online space for the three divisions to share the Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) work done by our members. Ideally, this will be a resource clearinghouse where library staff serving youth in school and public libraries can network and brainstorm together around EDI topics and best practices. While I personally can’t wait to get to work on this project with the members of the Interdivisional Committee, I recognize that…
Libraries Welcome all Families: a conversation with urban high school students about representation in the CT Nutmeg Nominees
Jillian Woychowski is the Library Media Specialist at West Haven High School and a member of the ALA Interdivisional Committee for School and Public Library Cooperation. Kymberlee Powe is the Head of Children’s and Teen Library Services at the West Haven Public Library I am very lucky as a school librarian to work so well with my public librarians. Our city’s children’s and teen services librarian has held card drives and visits me on a regular basis. We’ve coordinated getting materials for each other and worked together on summer reading. We also share the experience of serving on our state book award committee. I served on the high school level 2018 Nutmeg committee and Kym just wrapped serving on the middle grades committee for 2020 (see nutmegaward.org). Being on the committee for a state book is a serious time commitment, requiring reading 75-150 books and monthly meetings to discuss them. For…
Libraries Welcome all Families: Collaborating on Inclusive Summer Initiatives
By SPLC Committee members April Witteveen, Natasha Carty, Jill Woychowski, and Robin Gibson Public libraries are beginning to look ahead to their summer reading or summer learning programs. Through school and public library collaboration librarians can identify approaches for success using an equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) lens. In order to reach as many students as possible with information about library summer programs, a great strategy is to collaborate on school visits. Natasha Carty, who’s been a public librarian, school teacher, and now a school librarian, has seen the value of these visits from all angles. As a public youth librarian, Carty’s school visits resulted in a 50% increase in participation. She’s now looking forward to inviting her local public librarians to school to promote their summer reading program, and she will be investigating if there are ways to get students registered for the program while still in school. Carty…
Libraries Welcome all Families: Makerspace Mondays!
The AASL/ALSC/YALSA Interdivisional Committee on School and Public Library Cooperation is now focusing its work on equity, diversity, and inclusion projects that include library partnerships. This blog post is the first in this new series. The YALSA Call to Action Futures Report challenges libraries to “leverage new technologies and become kitchens for ‘mixing resources’ in order to empower teens to build skills, develop understanding, create and share, and overcome adversity.” In Hampstead, MD, a small town in Carroll County, the media center at Shiloh Middle School assumed that “kitchen” motif on Monday afternoons once a month, as Media Specialist, Holly Furhman, and Amanda Krumrine, Library Associate II, Carroll County Public Library (CCPL), partnered to provide a variety of STEM experiences to middle schoolers on Makerspace Mondays. Makerspace Mondays was born out of the realization that tweens attending this middle school did not have transportation to the CCPL during the week…
Children’s Librarians are Experts on Partnerships: Community Partnerships to Fund Collection Development for English Learners in Urban Connecticut
Jillian Woychowski is a School Library Media Specialist at West Haven High School and is a member of the AASL/ALSC/YALSA Interdivisional Committee on School-Public Library Cooperation. One of the most difficult moments of the month was observing my English Learners come to check out books with their classes and not be able to find anything they could read at the high school level. It broke my heart to see dejection on their faces. It did not matter that I myself could not understand the words they were saying; I could just see it. Students perform better academically in literature courses when they see themselves in the materials and simply enjoy independent reading more. While I had some titles of interest for my Latinx students topically, all of them were in English. I set out to add books to my school library collection to assist my Spanish-speaking students. To purchase fiction…