By the time you read this I will in Beijing, China. Our fabulous Executive Director, Aimee Strittmatter, and I have been invited to speak about American children’s library work at the Chinese Library Association Conference. Our whirlwind visit will include a tour of the National Children’s Library, the Children’s Library of Beijing and another location intriguingly referred to as Juvenile & Children Reading Experience Wonderland. We also hope to see the Forbidden City, the Great Wall and maybe even (please, please, please) a panda cub or two. Our Chinese counterparts are particularly interested in learning more about our Caldecott Award and the role that libraries play in making that award the catalyst for the creation of and celebration of great children’s picture books it has become. In 2009, China inaugurated their own award for children’s literature called the Zikai Award named for a famous Chinese cartoonist and modeled after the…
Category: Blogger Ellen Riordan
CALIFORNIA DREAMIN’
This month children’s librarians from all over the country will gather in Oakland, California for the biennial ALSC Institute. There are educational sessions including libraries’ roles in early education, better ways to connect our customers to information, tips on how to be at the “community table” and even, this time around, a trip to fairy land. It is an exciting and inspiring event; to be among so many people who share our passion and commitment. The greatest value of the Institute though is the space and time to really connect to our colleagues. In the busy worlds of libraries today with the competing demands of customers, stakeholders and administration, made more urgent by shrinking budgets, most of us have little time to consider what drives us to this work. A weekend sharing knowledge and energy is just the thing to recharge. Even if you can’t get to California, reaching out…
How Come Outcomes?
I encourage all of you to check out the ALSC Emerging Leaders report (Ask, Assess, Advocate:Demonstrating the Value of Youth Services) which articulates an important question for us. How do we accurately assess the value of children’s services in libraries? Many of us must justify our services to our communities and stakeholders when we secure our budgets, write grants or report to City Hall and very often we are asked for more than numbers. This is good news. We know we are more than the sum of our parts. Numbers, outputs, only tell part of the story. The real value we have is in our impact in the lives of our families we serve. We all have stories of this impact. These are the moments we hold dear: watching our customers grow from preschool storytime participant to confident young reader to successful student. In research, this ability to change behavior…