Blog Comments

Here are my comments on professional blogs:

School Library Monthly: Share the Wealth

What a great post. We all come up with so many great ideas in development, but they do not mean much until we place them in practice. I think the question you ask and the framework for answering it are great.
But Barbara Jansen’s question is a great one: “what will you do on Monday based on what you learned and contributed this weekend.”
You really took this to heart and the graphical answer does a great job at getting down to brass tacks. That is an approach I am going to steal myself. The more we can do to think about these great ideas and approaches in the context of our own situations and our own users, the more effective we will be. Thanks for your insight!
PS: Isn’t it funny that those forms we fill out can include such rote questions, when we work so hard in our everyday lives to design inquiry-based assignments with thoughtful questions? Always seemed ironic to me!



YALSA: BULLYING NOT JUST AN ISSUE FOR ONE MONTH

You could not be more right.

This is such a real issues, and one that everyone needs to continue to help grow awareness about. It is something that librarians can help not only with information and resources, such as the ones you provide, but also by being the adult and intervening.  Particularly when we as librarians often oversee the more informal interactions of students, we have to stand up against bullying, or even the hint of it right away.

But this bullying extends well beyond the school halls today, as the two examples you cite mention. The role of technology and web 2.0 have changed the nature of bullying, and we must be cognizant to the confrontations students can face online. This is where libraries and information literacy can continue to help. Children no longer "turn off" their social selves when they get home but have to learn how to effectively and safely enmesh these technological tools with their own self-development. Its challenging.

The more adults can help in this process the better. But bullying is an ongoing problem, and one we cannot ignore, even after its month in the spotlight.

Thank you for continuing to highlight this issue!


YALSA: Connect, Create, Collaborate: The Next Big Thing in Teen Spaces

 I love the great discussion here.

As to what Megan, Fernando, and Mark reference, space is going to be an ongoing issue. In some ways, those long "banks of desktops" play a significant role, no matter how much we dislike them; they often physically define the space for teens or other users. But if technology is moving us away from that, it has serious ramifications. I believe it is because librarians have fought so hard to find spaces in their libraries for teens, that it is crucial to start thinking about the future of these spaces now.

If the physical space of a library is changing, there will be renewed battles over claiming that space for different library users. If youth service librarians don't have a plan--whether it is the beautiful and creative ideas that Linda Braun suggests, or something more appropriate for your district and community, it is important to begin that conversation now so that as change continues to come, librarians are prepared to protect the teen spaces we have worked so hard to carve out. Finding more square footage can be a huge blessing to everyone in the library, but can only be fully realized if a long-term plan is developed to seamlessly move into that imagined future.