{"id":845,"date":"2009-08-10T07:41:04","date_gmt":"2009-08-10T14:41:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/?p=845"},"modified":"2009-08-10T07:42:12","modified_gmt":"2009-08-10T14:42:12","slug":"morris-seminar-looking-at-literature-with-a-more-critical-eye","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/2009\/08\/morris-seminar-looking-at-literature-with-a-more-critical-eye\/","title":{"rendered":"Morris Seminar Reflections: Looking at Literature with a More Critical Eye"},"content":{"rendered":"

I applied for the inaugural session of the ALA\/ALSC Morris seminar with the hope that the training would enhance my evaluation skills which I use when purchasing materials and also as an audio\/visual reviewer for School Library Journal<\/em>. Quickly I learned I would gain much more than that. <\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span>Approximately 30 people attended from all over the country and with a diversity of experience in the field of children’s literature, most being public and school librarians. We worked in small groups throughout the two day seminar. This was particularly valuable for me to see how differently people thought about certain books and made me see things I had never noticed before. I also appreciated how respectfully people disagreed even though librarians can get very emotional about certain titles. It was really an exciting experience to start looking at the literature with a more critical eye. <\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span>The entire seminar was so exciting and valuable in many ways. I was also fortunate to meet many wonderful people doing amazing things with youth services in libraries, schools, universities and other communities. These relationships that have formed will prove to be just as valuable as the training provided and many have formed into friendships that will last a lifetime. Not long after the seminar I applied for and was accepted as a Kirkus reviewer. This has further enhanced my evaluation and writing skills and is an incredibly fun experience. It is also very rewarding to contribute to the Youth Services community by providing purchasers with information they need to make collection development decisions. <\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span>I have been encouraging colleagues to apply for the 2010 Morris seminar as I believe it is an opportunity not to be missed!<\/span>\u00a0<\/span> <\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span>April Mazza
\n<\/span>Wayland Public Library
\n<\/span>Wayland<\/span>, <\/state>MA<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I applied for the inaugural session of the ALA\/ALSC Morris seminar with the hope that the training would enhance my evaluation skills which I use when purchasing materials and also as an audio\/visual reviewer for School Library Journal. Quickly I learned I would gain much more than that. Approximately 30 people attended from all over the country and with a diversity of experience in the field of children’s literature, most being public and school librarians. We worked in small groups throughout the two day seminar. This was particularly valuable for me to see how differently people thought about certain books and made me see things I had never noticed before. I also appreciated how respectfully people disagreed even though librarians can get very emotional about certain titles. It was really an exciting experience to start looking at the literature with a more critical eye. The entire seminar was so exciting…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":"","_members_access_role":[],"_members_access_error":""},"categories":[97],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-845","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-morris-seminar"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/845","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=845"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/845\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=845"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=845"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=845"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}