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FRIDAY @ AASL 2007 November 3, 2007

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DEWEY BREAKFAST

Friday started off nice and early for me with the Dewey breakfast. About a dozen hearty souls attended this meeting which began at 7:00 at the Silver Legacy. We took part in a very nice continental breakfast of pastries and fresh fruit while we heard from to of OCLC’s top executives in their Dewey division. I don’t remember their names but one was the chief of the division and the other was the chief editor. The division chief told us in general about plans for Dewey and, because I told her that on my way down the elevator the person I mentioned I was going to a Dewey presentation wondered whether Dewey was still in existence(!), reassured us that Dewey was still going strong, and adding new foreign language versions regularly. The editor elicited our input on some topics Dewey is currently working on, the prime one being the Education Schedule. She kept referring to us as “the experts” and we certainly were willing to give our input after a bit of coaxing, about whether “play groups” should continue to be mention under the number for preschool programs. It was interesting just get a taste of how the editors of Dewey really do elicit expertise from those who (should) know what’s going on in specific areas.

CONCURRENT SESSIONS
I had planned on attending a couple concurrent sessions i the morning but unfortunately both were canceled. I would have loved to have heard the “Great Database Debate” but alas it was not to happen. Instead I went to the presentation by Cassandra Barnett about the book challenges a couple years ago in the Fayetteville (Ark.) Public Schools. It was a fascinating story and I hope someday someone writes a book about the whole process. In the end, the community was very supportive of the librarians and the library program, but it must have been very difficult to maintain a professional demeanor through the whole nightmare.

My next session of choice was also canceled but it gave me the opportunity to hear Keith Curry Lance’s presentation about the first nationwide survey of library media programs which was commissioned last year by AASL. It was the first such survey and will give us a baseline from which we can continue to learn about who we are, what we provide, and what makes us tick. Keith will continue to tweak the survey and members of the audience (a very full room) were able to provide feedback and ideas. He was very appreciative of the input.
The rest of Friday in my next posting.

Thomas Kaun

Young Adult Literature Pre-Conference

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(aka: Urban Fantasy, Chick Lit, Graphic Novels, Audiobooks, and More: Young Adult Literature for the YouTube and MySpace Generation) by Dr. Ruth Cox Clark.

This preconference was broken into two parts. Part One dealt mostly with the marketing of YA lit to our students, and in Part Two we heard about great books in the various genres (booklist download here).

One problem is deciding where things go vis-a-vis genres: Urban Lit/Fantasy? Mystery/Chick Lit? Don’t worry about it! The main thing is to get the books there, and to promote and cross-promote as much as possible. We need to teach students how to self-select good reading (and AR/RR are a huge problem). The key is that students experience “unconscious delight”, a critical step in becoming a lifelong reader. This used to happen in 2nd grade but now happens later, in part because of AR/RR. Why? Because those programs “force” readers to read a preordained set of books, at a programmed level, whereas before students could read what they wanted and when (both up and down their comfort levels). Reading is more than decoding and comprehension: it needs to be an explosion of delight.

So, what strategies should we try?

Thanks to Mike Eisenberg and Peter Milbury November 2, 2007

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Mike and Peter, the co-founders of LM_Net, have announced that they are retiring… and that LM_Net will continue to thrive under the guidance of new co-moderators Blythe Bennett, Michelle Walker and Sue Wurster. On LM_Net itself, many folks have posted their gratitude to Peter and Mike for starting this unique listserv in 1992.

As a long-time member, here is my tribute:

When Mike and Peter described this new ‘community’ at an ALA meeting, I don’t think anyone realized what a profound effect it would have on us all. LM_Net has been an integral part of my professional and personal life since 1993.
Even though LM_NET’s core purpose is “topics of interest to the school library media community…” in reality the messages run the gamut of any friendly — and sometimes not so friendly — gathering of colleagues: daily survival skills, administrivia, personal and family interests, budget woes, news of the day, recommended resources, trends and theories, occasional political commentary, book and movie discussions, even bad jokes.

LM_Net has become *our* faculty room. It’s always fascinating (and sometimes heartening) to discover that school librarians all over the world have the same issues and problems. Many times LM_Netters have asked for help/advice, and then reported back that when they presented their administrators with the sheafs of responses they’d gotten from colleagues all over the country/world, they’ve been able to change policies or (stupid) decisions!

For the past 5 years, I’ve required my new/wannabe school librarian students to explore LM_Net’s archives as a way of learning about this marvelous resource. I explain to these students that LM_Net is really most like a giant cocktail party with many different conversations all taking place at the same time. As you walk around the room you’ll hear lots of isolated comments out of context, but if you stop to listen to each small conversational group, you do get a sense of what’s being
said, even as you can overhear comments from the conversation going on in the next group.

Peter and Mike — you have our undying gratitude for creating this wonderful learning community!

With heartfelt thanks,
Alice Yucht

AASL 2007: OFF TO A GREAT START November 1, 2007

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It took me a few false starts before I was able to log into the blog so I’ll be playing a little catch up over the next couple days. I’m writing as an experienced LMT but a first-time AASL attendee. I arrived Wednesday to the Conference on the California Zephyr from Martinez. It was a very pleasant trip across California and I found I could actually enjoy the scenery as we headed up and across the Sierra Nevada–a lot harder to do when you’re driving. On the train were two colleagues from San Mateo, Kris Cannon, the retired LMT from Mills High School and Judy Moomaugh, the county library coordinator. We had a great time sharing recent experiences and ideas which made the trip go all the more quickly. After checking in and looking around a bit, Kris, Judy and I went to dinner in a very nice Italian restaurant in one of the conference hotels. The next morning I took a shuttle bus down to the Convention Center which was located about 3.5 miles from the downtown hotel district.

For me the Conference started with a First Timers Orientation at 12:30. As a pleasant surprise lunch was provided for the first 200 attendees. In the end close to 300 folks were in the audience. Heard a lot of good advice from from AASL movers and shakers, many of whose names were familiar. It was good to be able put a faces to a names I’ve seen many times on LM_NET.

That afternoon also provided the Exploratorium, an exhibit of “learning stations that exemplify best practices in school librarianship.” I saw quite a few interesting ideas and got to meet the folks who fun the TRAILS online assessment for info lit skills among others.

Later we heard the conference keynoter, Dan Pink, the author of A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future. His book was the book all conference attendees were supposed to have read. I have to confess that I ordered the book for my library but in the end actually watched a video presentation which Pink recorded last year just to get his basic ideas down. Even though I had watched his earlier presentation, I was impressed by his speech to us. Dan believes, and backs it up with evidence, that the world of work is changing and the best metaphor to explain the change is the right-brain/left-brain model. Because we are losing routine tasks to outsourcing and off-shoring (Asia), our ever-expanding need for novel consumer goods (Abundance), and the growth of automated processes (Automation) the skills and processes of the right-brain are becoming more important than the skills and processes mediated by the left-brain. Our educational institutions have traditionally emphasized left-brain (logical, analytical, sequential) skills to the neglect of right-brain (empathetic, integral, holistic) skills. Dan believes that since those skills tend to be ones which cannot be outsourced, provide the designs needed to continue producing novel and interesting goods and processes, and are not susceptible to automation, those are the skills which we should be developing in our students. He quoted approvingly an administrator from a school district in New Jersey who said: “We should be educating students for their future, and not our past.”

Finally (whew!), the exhibit hall opened Thursday evening. It’s the location where I spent a lot of time over the next several days talking to vendors and picking free goodies.

Thomas Kaun