The Very Overdue #AISLNO17 Post (part 3)

My goal: to blog all the PD I’ve done this year before the academic year ends. In eight five four days. Get ready!

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Day Two: E-Books

The best presentation advice: start on time, end early, feed participants.

This is an area we explored gently over the past few years (both at Milton and Porter’s) and haven’t gotten much buy-in for, so I was interested to see what other schools were/are doing.  There’s so much to think about, and as one person said, we need to suck it up: things are evolving (as they did from film to VHS to DVD to streaming).  Here’s my question/problem: my students, based on a survey I did at Porter’s that got a 33% response, prefer print for fiction.  Why?  Because it’s an escape from the screen, providing a more immersive/less interrupted experience.  So… there’s that.  I might do a survey of Milton’s students and faculty, particularly as Overdrive is pushing a consortium for the local independent schools.  The Massachusetts ebook program is difficult, particularly since it only allows for one book/reader!

We agreed that there are So.Many.Platforms. ABC-CLIO, Amazon (might need to circulate Kindles), Destiny Discover (which only works with Destiny, so that’s out), EBSCO, GVRL, OUP and Salem Press for NF; Overdrive, Axis360 are for Fic.  The big question is how do you support all of them, including train people in their use because it’s not “one size fits all” for platforms!  Promoting them is also an issue, because discovery isn’t as obvious as it is for print (you can’t easily browse a shelf) you need to add MARC records to the catalog.  Another way to promote is to put links everywhere, in all Resource Guides, on pamphlets, etc. You could also let students know that Snapchat reads QR codes and include those codes in book displays or on the inside cover of a reference book.

Day Two: Personal Librarian Program (CD McLean and Katie Archambault)

Another “we need to try this at MPOW” idea, which may or may not work given our size population.  But still… They got the idea after reading The Personal Librarian (there’s also this one), which further enhances the idea of library as “third space” (see a theme?  Doug and Claudette both talked about this!).  It’s important to get Admissions, Communications and the Dean of Students on board before starting, particularly since you can start talking about the program on revisit days.

Other ideas?  Create a “what is a personal librarian?” video and “get to know your librarian” videos… Tasty Tuesdays (send a surprise gift of treats to a random class)… send emails to all incoming students, detailing how the program works and connecting it to the work they’ll be doing.  CD sends a letter, a follow-up letter, is a presence during orientation retreats and promotes library tours by “their” librarian.  Make sure the program is seen as two-fold, promoting reading and research.  Asking teachers if you can embed is great – digital embedding means you can drop resources into the class page (be it WhippleHill, GClassroom, Schoology, Moodle, or whatever your school uses), pushing databases, print books and critical websites.  Encourage 1:1 consultations with both faculty and students, adding a link to your sig. file for setting up an appointment.  What about YouTube videos personalizing the experience?  New Book lunches?  Having students sign up for Reading Recommendation and then do video/email outreach.  Constantly promote services and resources.

We were reminded that it’s important to do an annual debrief, to collect statistics and to keep up with alumni.  Equally important is that we don’t have to do it all: the same program doesn’t need to exist for 9, 10, 11 and 12th grade!  You can push heavily into 9th, less in 10th and 11th, and they’ll still remember to come in in 12th.

Another way to be personal?  Get college matriculation information and create a presentation highlighting the college libraries to students (eg, “If you’re going to Bates, you’ll find….”).  Do outreach to those librarians so your students are known.  (kudos to Elizabeth Nelson for this!)

Day Two: Booktalking

This is so easy to do with LS/MS students, but US?  Sigh.  So here are some great ideas we’re going to try in AY18 to try to get our overworked, overscheduled, overstressed students to read more fiction:

• Ask-a-Question
• PW’s First Sentence List
• Use these Book Reports
• TeachingBooks.net
• Checking Pinterest for trailers and displays
• Getting teens to create posts
• Using Typorama, Adobe Spark, Thinglink and Canva
• Creating “booktalks to go” for students to take with them

Whew!  One conference down… two (NEAISL and ACRLNE) to go…

 

Minor Musings

Winter hit.  More accurately, a winter cold hit.  And wouldn’t let go.  But luckily things are back to normal and I’m able to enjoy our Spring Break (two+ weeks in March, unlike public schools nearby that get a week in February and a week in April).  There’s the AISL conference in NOLA later this week and a Faculty Forum when we return – stay tuned for things learned from the amazing people at AISL as well as the library department’s Fake News presentation for my colleagues.  Until then…

Books, Reading, etc.

• Serving on book award committees and keeping an eye on various best selling lists, I’ve always wondered.  Now I know what makes a best seller.
• Food for thought: Angie’s Towards A Less Normative Future in Library Services to Children & Teens
• If you like Litographs, you’ll love these star charts!
• The artwork of these manuscripts is stunning.  Thanks BL for sharing.
• What happens when you read a book?

School Life

• What about creating something similar for your school or community using local archives and oral histories?
• Creative Commons now has an image search!
• Love the “sounds of learning” in your library?  This is food for thought (and a plea for quiet spaces).
• A new way to look at 21st century pedagogy.
• For the visual learners among us: a guide to statistics.
• It’s research season for many of us.  The OUP has some thoughts about using quotations. And LJ lists great “ready reference” websites and apps we should all use.

Tech Stuff

• If you’re a fan of Chrome and use Amazon, check out this extension, which shows whether the book you’re about to pay money for is available for free in your local library!
• Colorized photos from the 1800s?  Definitely changes how you see people and events. (ht: David)
• Note to Self’s Privacy Paradox challenge (and tip sheet). And according to this quiz, I’m a minimalist in terms of social media.  Do you need to unplug?
• FeedFlip from MIT – get out of your Twitter bubble.
• Librarian tested & approved apps. Flippity looks like fun, too.

Miscellany

• In honor of our mid-March storm, an interactive guide to Boston’s museums (for those don’t leave home “field” trips).  Or maybe take this Southern Literary Trip, do a virtual museum tour, go around the world in 80 models, take a tour of where penicillin was discovered or plan to visit some secret libraries.  Best: Honey, I Shrunk Myself (into a prayer bead).
• This course looks interesting.
• These miniatures make me happy.

It all comes down to these…

After thousands of reading hours, hundreds of books read, and over 24 hours of discussion, the 2017 Alex Award Top Ten was announced last Monday:

And because we couldn’t leave it there, there’s also a vetted list of 50 great titles (not live yet, but will be here).

What’s next?  I, and others on the 2018 committee, have already started reading and thinking about this year’s books.  Who knows what will rise to Top Ten, or vetted, status?  Watch this space…

Minor Musings

I’ve been busy planning for ALAMW and the YMAs – while I usually avoid the crowds, this year I need to be there as part of my Alex Award committee work.  So here’s a little something to think about and explore while I finish the 2017 award work (feel free to get ready for the Big Reveal!).

Books, Reading, etc.

• Tracking Reader Habits?  Luckily,  the majority of mine is print and untrackable.
• Wondering what good books you missed in 2016? The WSJ has a list of the 20 that made their year.
• While 2016 seemed to have a higher than normal number of celebrity deaths, did you know about these literary losses?
• Fiction vs. Nonfiction: does the difference matter? Is there a difference?
• Valentine’s Day is coming – this interactive map of fictional romances in New York City is the perfect to share with students.  Then have them update with local information!

School Life

• Word Births might be a fun winter display (my year produced “cyberculture” – who knew it was that old?)
• From detecting “fake news” (can we stop using that phrase?) to choosing courses, we can all use these Tips to Improve Critical Thinking. Or what about a course in The Fine Art of Sniffing Out Crappy Science?

Tech Stuff

• It’s never too early to have students think about internet privacy and to reconsider how they’re using the web. And in filter bubble news, make sure everyone knows how Facebook Warps Our World.
• Schools have replacement cycles for tech, but upgrades just aren’t great anymore.  Maybe time to rethink? And what about users skill levels?

My year in reading

As you’ve read in previous posts, I’m on the 2017 Alex Award committee.  Any adult book published in 2016 is eligible, and YALSA’s policy is that we (the committee) can’t publicly talk about what we’re reading .  But because I work in a MS/US school library I have to keep up with what’s going on in YA, and because there are genres and topics I’m not thrilled with, I have to have “comfort” reads.  So, being practical, I thought I’d get through about 75 non-Alex books… then perhaps 100 would be ok… and finally, 125 was my challenge goal.  Reader, I surpassed it.  Per Goodreads, here’s what my year looked like:

My “Alex eligible” reading reached 214, for a total of 345 books read in 2016.  Not my best (that was 399) but not bad either.  And while I can’t talk about the Alex books, I can tell you that between non-eligible (books published pre-2016, or those for children and young adults) my requests, committee nominations and personal “I really want to read that, whether or not there’s teen appeal” the genre breakdown was:

• Biography/Memoir – 26
• Children’s / Young Adult – 124
• Fiction / Literature – 76
• Horror – 7
• Humor – 7
• Mystery – 29
• Non-Fiction – 32
• Science Fiction/Fantasy/Speculative Fiction – 31
• Suspense – 13

I’m on the 2018 Alex Award committee, so the same rules will apply.  I’m wondering if I’ll read as many next year, either on my own or for the award.  Stay tuned!

 

(oh, and if you’re wondering about what happened to the books, many were donated to my school, my friends and a local charity shop – lucky them)

What I did on my summer “vacation”

Wow.  I know I promised to post when life calmed a little – guess what, it didn’t.  While my position is on the teachers schedule, this summer we had a major project going on.  In the space of seven weeks, I and two recent graduates worked hard to weed books, reshelve them in a better order, move furniture and really start the process of creating a 21st century library space:

There’s still much to do, but at least the pace will be a lot slower.   I won’t promise to blog more, because that hasn’t worked in the past, instead I will promise to try to blog more.

Getting my Alex on

In addition to getting to know a new collection and a new school’s way of doing research, I’ve been working on the 2017 Alex Award Committee.  If you’re not looking at adult reads being published in 2016, you’re missing out (trust me on this).

The charge of the Alex Award is to find books with teen appeal, something that is at times difficult for me to suss out.  As someone in her second half-century, putting myself in the mindset of a teen isn’t always easy!  There have been occasional meme-based responses to our Instagram posts and, well… luckily I have staff who are much closer to that age group and get memes.  With Alex, I’m looking for a plot that might interest them – even in non-fiction, as I learned working on the ENFYA Committee and as I’m telling our sixth graders, there can be a narrative arc! – with characters that make sense.  That doesn’t mean I’d expect them to “relate” to Hannibal Lecter, but so many teens love to read Silence of the Lambs thanks to the horror and “creep factor” that it’d probably have gotten the Alex, had it existed when the book was published.

A few weeks ago I booktalked some recently published novels by American authors to an American Lit class.  We came up with twitter “reviews” to pique their interest (eg, “Orange blossoms mean fascination. Chrysanthemums mean you’re a good friend.  More subtle than emojis, flowers speak volumes” for The Language of Flowers, a 2011 nominee)   and they were asked to choose one, read it and then present (to the class and others) on how that book mimicked or expanded on themes in the books they were reading for class.  Talking with them as they chose these books was interesting, with many excited to read something new and not being taught in class.  One or two have even asked for more by that author, or in that genre.

Our fiction collection here was not necessarily bought with teens in mind – Ferrente’s Neopolitan novels, for example – but traditionally we have had a lot of faculty who use our collection for their pleasure reading.  As I continue to read for Alex, I’m wondering about that “teen appeal” part and reflecting on some of the books I’ve read in the past, like Millay’s Sea of Tranquility, which (to my mind) had little adult appeal but was not published at a YA book and thus won the award in 2014.  It will definitely guide my purchasing for our collection in future, as we try to balance “adult appeal” with what will actually appeal to our students.  It will also be interesting to see how we can market these books to both faculty and students without one or the other feeling as though their needs are not being met.

My Kanye moment

No, I’m not going to interrupt someone – I’m talking about this moment:

https://twitter.com/kanyewest/status/698926987281371136

Research season (part one) hit us, and once again I thought about how difficult research is for students.  As we’ve been weeding the print collection and bulking up the digital offerings, it’s been interesting to watch how students interact with what we have.  Much of their research has been what I’d call “cherry picking” research: find a fact here… find a fact there… find a quote somewhere else… repeat.  The great narrative nonfiction we have doesn’t get used to their fullest extent, in part because they (the students) don’t really have time to delve into their topics.  Of course, that hasn’t changed since I was in high school!

Over the past few years, I’ve regretted the loss of those Time-Life book sets.  Remember them?  So many of them were great resources for research, perfect for a quick read and cherry pick information, much as they do with Daily Life series.  But, sadly, T-L has ceased publishing (before completing This Fabulous Century!) and what we have is falling apart from use.

Years ago, the Marvelous Marion and I dreamed up a business idea: Sugar Daddy Press (because we’d need a sugar daddy to get things going).  We’d buy the rights to those series and create wonderful reprints, even extending them.  Example?  The Library of Art would move into other arts, giving us The World of Mozart and The World of Bronte in addition to The World of Van Gogh. We’d also take on those Jackdaws, only now they’d be online (Rosen, please get on this ASAP!).  There were so many other books that we found – and I still find – missing from our shelves, if by “missing” you mean “never published” or “out of print”.

Hence my Kanye moment.  Much as I love my job, if someone invested in Sugar Daddy Press I’d leave this one in a second to start getting things moving.  Because Research Season (part two) is about to hit.

Minor Musings

Some things to think about while I digest ALA Midwinter and hiring new staff…

Books, Reading, etc.

• While I’d love to teach this exact class, since I’m on the Alex Committee for the next couple of years it might be possible to figure out a way to create something similar with those books.
• More Shakespeare thinking (this time from JSTOR and the Folger)
• This year we’ve been working with the 6th grade English class and creating book recommendation materials.  Here’s an idea. And another one for increasing vacation reading from Katie: bring the books to the kids.
• Don’t you love year end lists for personal and professional collection development?  I do.  Here’s stuff from The Hub, Semicolon

School Life

• We have a Senior Transitions class at MPOW.  Maybe this could be part of it?  And even though we don’t have AP classes, perhaps we could get the Senior Projects to look like the AP Capstone.  I’ve been thinking about Courtney’s VAASL presentation, too.  More to come about that.
  
• The library is part of the school’s Big Master Plan for renovation (reality: 5+ years from now) but it’s never too early to think about getting student input, particularly since we’re considering some small steps towards a better space.  Buffy’s summation is a great place to start.  And then there’s signage/branding via Courtney.

Tech Stuff

• Joyce points out the great AP Archive is now online.  Bookmark it. Then bookmark these Old Maps.
• Do you recommend podcasts?  Here are some to start with.
• Privacy check up time: Google and Facebook.

Etcetera

• Time to remind our seniors (and younger students) how to get involved in the political process.

Diverse Diversity @ #ALAN16

Diversity was a minor theme for the various professional development opportunities I had during the month or so before Winter Break.  I’m always mindful of the fact that “diversity” doesn’t only mean “skin tone”; when I was co-chair of my school’s accreditation self-study, we tried to think about all of NYSAIS’ definition of diversity when discussing the school’s culture:

How does the school officially communicate its policies and practices with respect to differences in ethnicity, race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, age, socioeconomic level, physical ability, and learning styles?

Sometimes we do better at one, sometimes better at another.  When I hear #weneeddiversebooks I think about the diverse diversities and what books are doing to address them.  How does this relate to ALAN?

Last year there was a lot of discussion about “boy books” vs “girl books” and that carried over to this year.  One panelist asked why no one asks where are the strong boy characters, simply because strong boy characters are the norm.  Why can’t we have a world where that’s assumed equally for boys and girls? When one voice (male, or white, or Christian, or whatever) is always the authority/norm in books, it starts to carry over into real life because that’s what readers internalize.  Protagonists are protagonists, period.  Why don’t we say, “the protagonist” rather than “the girl protagonist”?  Because if it’s a girl (or not white or poor or some other diverse subset) that’s what we notice.  And isn’t that a shame?

The myth of diverse (by ethnicity or race) books not selling was also addressed.  They do sell, but part of the problem is that the publishers are small presses without the big ARC/promotion budgets of the big houses.  Why are so many English books translated into other languages, and not vice versa?  What about diverse authors, and getting their story out?  We were reminded that diversity is not all conflict, it can just “be” and still make for an amazing book.  Just look at science fiction/fantasy/speculative fiction: they write around diversity and outside themselves all the time and no one questions those authors about using an authentic voice (and it was repeated: did not being a wizard make JK Rowling’s world less authentic?).  The big takeaway was that maybe we should promote diverse books by not framing them as diverse, but as being about the story, as in “this a coming-of-age story” or “this is about first love”.

We were reminded that there were other diversities (see, it did all tie in!) that aren’t being as discussed, and where are the authors who are writing about these issues? Poverty, the not-college-bound, the disabilities (cancer, something other than OCD/ASD, a physical limitation), teens in prison, etc. are also missing from our shelves.  The reality of these lives is that they’re not easy, not everyone accepts them and sometimes, life hurts.  We need books that also say that while we may have depression, asthma, grief, etc, we aren’t depression, asthma, grief, etc., we’re human.  Let’s remember that, as Laurie Halse Anderson said, adults know how to handle “dark” while teens are turning to fiction to learn how to cope.  And Margi Preus eloquently said that every student reading is doing research into their future lives, books are a door to that life.  So let’s open up the canon, add some new books that maybe weren’t taught (or published) back when we were in high school!