YALSA Award for Excellence in Nonfiction for Young Adults

Wow.  Just… wow.  I won election to the YALSA Award for Excellence in Nonfiction for Young Adults Committee for 2012!  Wondering what that means?  LizB explains it all (she’s on the committee this year).

This officially changes what (and how much) I’ll be reading next year.  Luckily, I’m a pretty fast reader, and besides Liz, I know many members of the previous committees I can ask for support and advice.  And I come to my reviewing cred naturally (kudos, Dad!) so no worries there.

Guess I better plow through my current TBR pile even faster than previously planned… and a huge THANK YOU to those who voted for me!

It’s not to late to vote (and why more of us need to be involved with ALA!)

Polling for ALA’s annual elections closes Friday – have you voted yet?

Be honest.  Have you?

If not, you’re like many of your ALA colleagues.  Voting seems to be something “someone else” does, and certainly not something that youth services members (those of us in AASL, ALSC and YALSA) do.  Yet we love to complain that Big ALA doesn’t understand us and doesn’t help us when we need their support.

Working on ALA’s Nominating Committee this year was an eye opener.  My brief was to reach out to members of those three divisions and try to get people to run for Council and President.  Let me tell you: it was a difficult sell.  In this time of budget and staffing cuts, many people were unsure if they’d have funding, much less a job next year.  I can’t argue with their desire to sit this round out!  It’s not just attending two conferences (sorry! one conference and one working session) a year, it’s an additional day at each event… not to mention all the e-mails and discussions you’ll be having in between.  When I approached candidates for President, that was also one of the reasons most gave for not running this year (the other main reason was that they didn’t feel well-known outside their division(s) and that they didn’t want to run without a better knowledge of Big ALA and other division’s issues; again, I completely respect those reasons).

I applaud YALSA for moving to virtual committee memberships.  With the exceptions of a handful of committees and the award selection committees, no one is required to attend the physical conference.  Why can’t more divisions do that?  Of course, it will lead to even more compartmentalism by division, but it can also increase member commitment to the division’s work and draw them to a physical conference when one is nearby.  This appears in AASL’s “we’d like you to serve on ___ committee” letters:

You understand that AASL committee members are expected to participate actively by attending meetings of the committee or task force and by timely response to the chairperson’s communications.  Meetings may take the form of face to face interaction, conference calls, electronic chats or other virtual interactions. According to ALA Policy 4.5, failure to attend two meetings or groups of meetings without an explanation acceptable to the chair constitutes grounds for removal from the committee.

Here’s the thing: they still expect face-to-face interaction.  There is no push to make all the work virtual when it really could be done better and more effectively  that way..  I challenge ALA to follow YALSA’s model.  I challenge AASL to do also make that change.  If Council were more open to virtual participation, perhaps more youth services members would be willing to serve and make our voice, our positions heard.

As for being known outside our divisions, maybe we need to push for reduced multiple membership fees.  There’s much someone in a school library can learn from someone in an academic library, or someone who works in management.  One idea I heard floated was a revolving presidency – one year from this division (or group of divisions), another year from somewhere else in ALA.  Bad idea.  The reason a school librarian hasn’t won the presidential election is because we aren’t known, or valued, outside our tiny corner of the world – and our corner doesn’t vote.  Dunno why that is, but we don’t.

So, in the fewer than 48 hours remaining, please vote.  Let Big ALA know that members of YALSA, ALSC and AASL are an important voice in the organization and that our vote matters.

Musings on Ross Todd at SWBOCES

Nothing Dr. Todd said was particularly new to me, but much of it bears repeating…

• The library should be the heart of the school, and the heart of the library should be innovative learning/innovative teaching
• Our current culture of testing and teaching to the test leads to superficial knowledge (what do I need to know to pass?) – how do we create excitement over the intellectual life of the mind?
• Teachers are the single most important thing in student learning: we are teachers, and we need to engage and excite students.
• We’ve built a culture of fear around technology – yes, there are issues (privacy, access to ‘inappropriate’ content, etc.) but we have to give students the ethical and intellectual skills to use it well
• The biggest problem of the information age?  We’re finding stuff to death

 

He then talked about what librarians do, and how we’re always talking about “our” curriculum.  Au contraire – we shouldn’t have a curriculum.  Instead, we help students learn the school’s curriculum.  How?  With collaboration and modeling ethics, innovation and inquiry.

 

“Liberate – Empower – Motivate – Reponsibility – Integrity”

 

We need to create a culture of intellectual, academic and social engagement in libraries – students need help moving from merely finding to doing something with what they’ve found.

 

Now, here are my questions (musings?):

• what about administrative buy-in?  Many administrators see the library curriculum as “other” and external to the testable stuff (particularly in Lower Schools).
• What about teacher buy-in?  At Hackley, we have many very qualified teachers – if I started to say, ‘here’s how you do the research and here’s how you’re going to interact with that information’ I suspect many of them would feel that I’m treading into their territory.  That doesn’t preclude collaboration, but some teachers would rather I be there for 5-10 min previewing how to use a database and then leave.  Do I refuse to go to those classes?  Do I insist on “partnership or nothing”?
• Why are we being charged with this?  Where is the move at NCTE or other organizations to insist on collaboration with the librarian?  The call for change can’t come from us, it has to come from others as well.

 

Thoughts and notes from #CIL11

One of the things I dislike about keynotes is that they’re canned: the speaker usually comes with a “yay! Librarians!!” message or to sell a point-of-view/product, all very slick and PowerPointed.  Thanks to weather conditions, the keynote speaker was unable to get to CIL in time.  Now, I’d been interested to hear him because he was a Google Books representative, and there are some issues with the whole project (ironically, the settlement was struck down by a judge the next day.

Faced with an empty stage, the organizers quickly threw together a panel to talk about e -books in general.  While you can watch the conversation (or read the transcript), here’s my notes and takeaway:

• When you read online, it’s less about reading it all and more about discovery (eg, research rather than immersive reading).  The question then becomes all about context – what about snippet views, which can lead you to assume you’re getting the fact rather than the straw horse argument?
• What are the unintended consequences when we have immersive entertainment instead of actual experiences – socialization issues? ergonomic issues?
• We no longer care about the bound periodical collection – use the shelving/housing space for other things.  What is the difference between a chapter and a scholarly article (I’d argue that the latter has a summation that the former may not).  Periodicals/journals will all be fully integrated with internet, videos, etc. in the future.
• All of this is because we can do these things – but what about commercial boundaries? In terms of the Google project, we’re in Google space, not public space.  To maintain that public space, libraries should help digitize local collections (but what about privacy issues?).
• The more information that’s out there, the better it drives Google results – contrast this to paid for content.
• NOTE: the Internet Archive is also digitizing content – more library friendly, except for the cost of the digitization (Google is doing it in hopes of collecting on the back-end)
• Right now, despite the volume of digitized content, we don’t have a huge corpus of books available for searching.  Why?  Copyright.
• What happens to HTML5 and eReader models?  In 2011, SCOTUS will rule on copyright and access (also, Congress is trying to assert copyright over works currently in public domain – LINK)
• We’re all upset about HarperCollins and other publishers changing the rules post-fact.  Why? Lending e-books is scaring publishers (they’re losing control of product/copy).  Libraries are bound by legal models that refer only to print.
  • Assume massive change is on its way regarding streaming, digital downloads, eReaders and the business models
  • Libraries and bookstores need to radically change
  • There’s no DRM for many academic resources, only commercial ones
  • HC isn’t the only problem – Simon & Schuster and MacMillian aren’t even in the game! Why isn’t there an outcry over that?
  • What does a digital collection mean for space and usage?
    • We need to have smaller, more vigorous working collections
    • This will open up more resources to those that may not find them using traditional techniques
    • What about long-form, immersive reading?
    • Ebooks are not always cheaper than print
    • Why are we letting Bezos/Amazon set the agenda re: format, and why are we allowing Jobs/Apple to censor apps/books via iTunes?  This is antithetical to the librarian’s credo, yet we’re not in an uproar!

So, with that as the starter the conference started…   Here are random notes from the sessions I attended.

Marketing Solutions and Homework Helpers -

The big takeaway from these two sessions was that you need to brand yourself as a Library Team – everyone in the space should be equally available to help students.  Know your target audience and market to them (it’s not just students, it’s parents and administrators).  Allow them to make suggestions/ask questions.

Research Tips/Tools -

• Off-line and on-line research are not the same thing – we need to rethink how we teach students to do each.
• Search does not equal research, despite what students think (and we tell them)
• Students need to learn the conventions of on-line reading and research
  • non-fiction has become more visual, text becomes more like a “choose your own adventure” book thanks to the influence of web design (think DK books)
  • students need to become savvier about what is an ad (aka “sponsored link”) – usually it’s in a non-standard colored box, but not always
  • Students need to read with an eye towards gathering information, and to get excited about/by information
  • Visuals influence decisions – students don’t “see” credibility the way we do – and they often overwhelm students (they’ll often choose visuals over text when searching)
  • Have students read the information aloud – does it make sense? If not, why not?
  • Remind them that research is a process, that the first search is not the final search (process = presearch, search, re-search), and they need to utilize all types of reading
  • Always be open to learning that your question may not be the right question – the clue is usual in the language of the site
  • Student’s biggest worry is being wrong, not ‘authority’ – that is your hook!

Teach them to think and look around. Teach them this motto: research is not a straight line

Final thoughts on #TEDxNYED

My first thought is that while everyone stressed how we need to expand student horizons, to be “global”, the more interesting projects (poetry, farming) were local in nature.  As this blog post points out, we have to take care of ourselves before wearing ourselves out caring for others .

Secondly, why are we seeing/hearing from speakers that have been around for years and haven’t changed their message?  If “we” haven’t adopted it, or schools haven’t changed, maybe it’s not the right message – it needs to be tweaked, or updated.  I had a discussion with one conferee, who argued that many people haven’t heard the message.  Nonsense.  In this day and age of twitter, streaming video, blogging, etc., to not have heard some of these speakers before means you’re not listening and following.  So why are you at TEDxNYED?  Keeping up professionally is (or should be) a requirement, not an add-on.

What I mean is, there are those for whom staying on top of the newest thinking is, well, not their priority.  They don’t attend conferences, or do so because they’re required to (recently I heard one person ask “what’s Twitter” – you may not be using it, but to have never heard of it?!).  TEDxNYED isn’t one of those conferences, it’s a self-selecting group that tends to be relatively aware of things.  So don’t invite speakers that we’ve seen at many other conferences, invite those that have something new – or challenging – to say.

Finally, and this goes for other conferences too – it shouldn’t be such an insider event.  I sat with people who hadn’t been to the previous TEDxNYED, nor had they necessarily been to NEIT or ITSE.  Perhaps fewer inside jokes and shout outs and more “we’re all equals here” needs to be the rule.  With the assumption, of course, that we’re all colleagues who are keeping up and don’t need to given ABC presentations (let’s move on to GHI or maybe even RST – isn’t the idea behind TED to be provocative and innovative?).