In Case You Missed It...

If you aren't aware of my other project, Everyday Diversity (see the tab below the header of my blog), I've started posting round-ups of new books that feature racial diversity and are good for storytime. You can read the first round up here

If I had my act together I'd have posted this last week, but I made a Summer Reading Hype video for Bryce's project to encourage library staff who are struggling to get through the constant onslaught of SRP. It's a cool project, and lots of fun stuff was made by librarians around the country, including yours truly.
Check it out here

WLA 2013

October has been a whirlwind of presenting and traveling. It was great, but I'm excited for life to settle back down. This past week, I was in in Green Bay for the Wisconsin Library Association Youth Services Pre-conference and Annual Conference. Those Wisconsin librarians know how to do a conference right!

I had a great time presenting, "Engaging Early Literacy Storytimes: Props, Puppets, Flannels and More" at the pre-conference. The main problem I encountered was that I didn't bring enough handouts! If you missed a handout, or just want a taste of what I did, you can find it here.

I also had the pleasure of co-presenting, "Making Social Media Work for YOU: with Sara from Bryce Don't Play. Our slide deck was more humorous than helpful, being GIF-filled, but we also created a Google Site to help people get started building their own personal learning networks.

I also got to co-host WLA's first Guerrilla Storytime! It was loads of fun. Keep an eye on the Storytime Underground for the low-down on how it went!

Overthinking It

I'm so thankful for other bloggers who inspire me to complete and actually share things I've been sitting on forever. Sometimes I get very frustrated with myself for being such a slow processor. I get an idea and I need to think about it and just let it be for a long while before I put it into words. Mostly I am learning to appreciate that about myself, but it's hard sometimes when I see people who are so talented at just getting things done quickly and efficiently.

I recently attended my first ALA, and it was amazing. I was able to have some great conversations with Melissa and Kendra about being a slow-processor, and I also sharpened some of my thinking about my approach to programming through Marge and Amy's session on Unprogramming.

One of the pivotal slides from Marge and Amy's Unprogramming session

I have DEFINITELY struggled with over-planning programs, and I have a few posts I've been sitting on that I feel like I can finish now (yay!). I love when I read a blog post, connect with colleagues, or attend a session that sharpens and focuses the amorphous blob of thoughts I've been sitting on forever. It feels like magic. 

That Time of Year Again

It's my first giveaway post!

Well, duckies, it's that time of year. I'm determined to keep my workload at 40-45 hours per week and NO MORE. Since I was a bit sick last week and it was my Saturday to work I ended up making up hours on Sunday and essentially worked all weekend. Then I looked at the calendar for the next two weeks and basically had a panic attack. So. I'm taking the blog off my plate for a little bit--don't worry about me if I disappear for a few weeks. My goal is to just take the rest of June off and come back in July, but we'll see.

In order to share how much I appreciate all of you who read my words here, I have a giveaway!

I have a copy of "Bugs Galore" by Peter Stein and illustrated by Bob Staake (LOVE Bob's illustrations, which you may have gathered from my homage in felt) I received this copy for free by reviewing it for School Library Journal, but I'm going to share it with you.

Just leave a comment and tell me why you like to read this blog. Your comments will fortify me during the C-R-A-Z-Yness of summer.

You have until July 1st to enter the giveaway contest--good luck and see you soon!

<3
Miss Anna

Exciting news for Flannel Friday!

Introducing the Flannel Friday website!

It's awesome. Seriously, go look--I'll wait.

Background

 (this post has been written by Melissa of Mel's Desk, our fabulous Flannel Friday originator, and everyone who has ever hosted FF has been invited to share it)

As you know, Anne at So Tomorrow has been an amazing manager and archiver of Flannel Friday information for the past year. Anne and her husband are expecting their first baby in June (congratulations Anne!) so we wanted to give her a break from Flannel Friday during her maternity leave. So this spring, Anne and Mel from Mel's Desk and a small group of old and new Flannel Friday-ers worked to create a new web home for Flannel Friday.

Here's the link!

The new site will be the home of the Round Up Schedule, the archives, FAQs about Flannel Friday, information about how to get involved with Flannel Friday, and links to help new members get started with social networking and blogging. There will also be a link to the week's Round Up, but the Round Up will continue to be hosted on individual blogs. We'll just point to each Round Up from the site.

Refining the Round Up Procedure

The Flannel Friday community has grown continuously over the year, with new bloggers, new Round Up Hosts, and new members every week on Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter. We are building an amazing community and are grateful to each and every one of you for your participation and enthusiasm. As the group has grown, you've probably noticed that so have the Round Ups! We've seen an inevitable increase in missed links and general confusion as the Round Ups are compiled. We thought that the launch of the new site was a great opportunity to take a page from other round ups in the blogosphere and establish one single method for building the Round Up each week.
This information will be in the FAQs on the new site, but here's our new strategy in a nutshell:

• Every week the Round Up Host will publish a "placeholder" post for the Round Up on the host blog at 10pm EST on Thursday.
• Each blogger who wants to participate in the Round Up will make a comment to the Round Up post with the link back to their Flannel Friday post by 10pm EST on Friday.
• This will be the only place to post links for the Round Up! This way the Host won't have to worry about checking Facebook or Twitter as well.
• If a blogger can't make the 10pm EST deadline on Friday, we'll ask that the post be held for the next week's Round Up.
• The Round Up Host will gather links from the Round Up post comments throughout the day, and publish the Round Up at the end of the day.

We hope this will make the Round Ups easier to create and easier to contribute to! We'll look forward to your feedback over the next few weeks. Sharon /@ReadingChick at Rain Makes Applesauce has the Round Up this week, 5/11, so she's going to try out the new procedure with us and see how it goes!
If you have questions or comments, don't hesitate to share them via the new Flannel Friday email: flannelboardfriday [at] gmail.com.

Thanks for all you do to to make Flannel Friday more than a blog event--but a great community too. Here's to the next great year of Flannel Friday!

Philosophizing

Have I whined mentioned my commute before? I live 42 miles from work. Yeah, that's an oil change per month. On the plus side, lots of time to listen to audiobooks! And I just got a new stereo in my car with an iPod hookup, so Playaways are now available to me, too.  Yay!

The point of me mentioning this is to say: I also spend a lot of my commute blogging...in my head. If only there were a legal/non-life endangering way to drive and blog at the same time, I'd be all over that.  Oh the wonderful posts I've written for you...in my head.

This is one of them.*

I've been thinking a lot lately about philosophies. Why do I certain things, why do I do them the way that I do, etc. I think it's important to be able to answer those questions--especially in institutions like libraries where there is such a long and ordered history. There are few things that make me cringe more than the phrase, "Because that's the way we've always done it."

That should never be the answer to anything. Seriously. If that's the only way you know to justify a process, it's time to step back and evaluate. I'd say re-evaluate, but chances are that there was never an initial evaluation. Libraries are notorious for this; going on Full-Steam Ahead! and rarely stopping to see if circumstances have changed or if there's a better way. Let's stop that, shall we?

I like to look at how things work in terms of systems, and think of more efficient processes and policies. I've likely annoyed many status quo-loving coworkers over the years but, alas, it is my nature to organize, systematise, and update. I can honestly say that in every job I've had, I've left the place running more efficiently than when I started. It's a good feeling.

In terms of what I'm doing now, I plan to write a series of philosophizing posts to cover the following topics:
My philosophy of teen services
My storytime philosophy
My art/craft philosophy
My music philosophy

I'm outlining my plans here in an attempt to be a bit more organized about posting, and get more of these posts out of my head and onto the blog where you can read them.

*The way I wrote this makes me think of the grammatically awkward opening to the show Hoarders, "This is one of their stories..." I thought about making that more intentional and playing up the joke, but my sense of humor is strange and I wasn't sure if anyone would even get it. So I decided to make an awkward footnote type thingy** down here so as not to distract from the serious nature of my blog-itizing.

**There must be a real name for the act of using an asterisk to make a post-script. If only there were some kind of research expert around to figure it out.

Putting Out Fires

Source

Hi! Remember me?

I've been practicing "Fire Librarianship." As in, if it's not on fire/due right NOW/happening today I don't have time for it.

The amount of half-finished posts in my queue is rather amazing. I have so much I'd like to share with you.  Unfortunately I've been working 9-12 hour days and I commute two hours a day. Yeah, that math is gross. Things are looking up though, and soon I won't be SO busy...in theory. In fact, I'll have a brand new Flannel Friday contribution this week. See you soon!

State of the Union

New things are always sneaking up behind you

I feel like I've been going non-stop since about mid-March this year.  Really, we've been behind since last fall because my library went through a--dun dun dunnnnnnnnhhh--reorganization.  And, while entirely necessary for the running of the library, it was painful and hard and all around terrible in a lot of ways.  It came at a bad time (is there ever a good time?) at the beginning of the school year, and it threw my whole year three-months behind schedule--which was fine until we got to the rubber-hits-the road parts of SLP planning.

Mid-March is when things really started getting crazy for me--and that's about when I started this blog, joined Twitter, and decided to participate in Flannel Friday.  Perhaps not the best timing, but next year will be better!

My summer program ended on August 4th and I immediately went into a two week vacation (completely funded by comp. time that I accrued since March) and crashed HARD.  I ended up having to come in to work during my vacation to do interviews because the week before I left we had a retirement and a resignation.  This week I came back Tuesday and jumped right into spending 4 hours of each day training our new afternoon Library Clerk.  Next week I'll start fresh with the new evening clerk and there goes all my glorious planning and catch-up time! I'm sure that's a familiar story to many people. 

At this point I haven't even set a date for fall storytimes to resume, but my plan is to start writing a series of detailed posts about how storytime works at my library and how I do my planning.

Until next time!