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!

Michigan Library Association's Spring Institute

Sara, Anne, and I had a fabulous time presenting at Spring Institute over in Michigan last week. I love the idea of a state library association sponsoring a whole conference just for youth services (I noticed when I arrived that it was the most fashionable conference I'd ever attended. At first I wondered if Michigan was an underrated fashion mecca, but ultimately I decided that we YS folks are just a particularly fashionable branch of librarianship).

If you're interested in seeing the slides from our presentation they are available here. Most of our jokes only work in person though. Sorry!

Anne has a collection of the ideas gathered during the interactive portion of our talk over at So Tomorrow. 

Enjoy!

Conversation Starter 2013

Holy moly there are a lot of awesome conversation starter topics for ALA Chicago in June! I must admit that I'm feeling a little intimidated, but I have a topic on the table myself (with of my coworkers). If it's something you'd like to see, please make sure to vote for it waaaaay back on page 12 (see--so many great topics! I don't know how I'll ever decide which two I'm going to vote for).

Program on a Plate: Serving up Successful Visual Literacy Programming for Pre-Readers

by ALAConnect Helpdesk (staff) on Mon, Feb 25, 2013 at 10:07 am Description: Besides storytime, what literacy programs is your library feeding hungry pre-readers? Visual literacy programming offers pre-readers and struggling readers a way to hone this crucial skill through collaboratively interpreting visual data and creating narrative. VizLit, like STEM, gives parents value-added programs with direct results.  Parents love it, kids love it; it’s a recipe for success! Join the conversation as we share our basic ingredients for visual literacy programming and help you develop strategies to implement these easy programs in your library.

Who else has an awesome proposal out there? Let me know in the comments so I can narrow down my choices!

Stop Duplicating Efforts! Creating a Unified Online Community Calendar

source

Have you ever planned a program and no one showed up?

Ever worked hard laying groundwork for a new idea only to find halfway through that some other community group already does that?

 What about discovering (after you've published all your PR) that your big event conflicts with another big event in town?

I know I have. Imagine my delight when the head of Parks and Rec contacted me about starting a project to create a single unified calendar for the whole community  YES YES YES!

If you'd like to view the calendar we created, you can do so here, Antigo Community Calendar. In a nutshell, instead of many different organizations publishing event calendars, and event coordinators  needing to contact multiple sources to advertise programs, we're all using the same calendar. No matter what organization's website you're on, they're using the same calendar.

I recently spoke at the Wisconsin Library Association's annual conference about this project. I was only one part of a team that worked on creating the calendar, but I think it is such a great idea that I support it wholeheartedly, and think it's something that other librarians--especially those in smaller communities--might benefit from as well.

Our presentation was a success, and if you're interested here are some links to more information about the project.

Our presentation
Handout/Worksheet
Example of PR and category breakdown
Sample PR business card
Our funding was sourced by the local hotel/motel tax--see the application form

MLA Handout

Creating Professional Community: Beyond the Social Media Buzz

Instead of giving out paper handouts during our presentation, Sarah and I decided to post live links to all the resources we mentioned in our talk. The goal of our talk is to help librarians, especially those working in YS, to connect online and create meaningful professional networks. Hope this helps!

Contact Us:
Sarah Wethern
YA Librarian Tales
@whtabtpineapple

Anna Haase Krueger

 @opinionsbyanna

The World of KidLit

Cybils
Kidslitosphere Conference

Twitter:
Tweet Chats:
#readadv, #libchat, #yalitchat,  #FridayReads, #titletalk, #SaturdayLibrarian,  #satchat, #pblitchat

Edudemic’s artitcle “20 Twitter Chats Every Librarian Should Know About”
Twitter for Newbies (by Anna)
Why Twitter? “If You Were on Twitter Yesterday” by Scott McLeod

Sarah's picks:

@LizB, @Tuphlos, @jane_l, @gcaserotti, @lochwouters, @abbylibrarian @MrSchuReads, @100scopenotes, @himissjulie, @MelissaZD, @MissKubelik

Anna's picks:

@sotomorrow, @AskaManager, @catagator, @papersquared, @readingchik @screwydecimal @molliekay @daisycakes @PLSanders @librarian_lali @bobshea

List-Servs

YALSA-BK, PUBYAC, ALSC, CCBC-Net

Flannel Friday and Storytime Resources

Flannel Friday website
Flannel Friday on Pinterest
Flannel Friday website
Flannel Friday--Creating Collaborators and Friends

Mel's Desk
Abby the Librarian
What Happens in Storytime
Storytiming
Storytime Katie
Resource List on Mel's Desk
Storytime Share
Flannel Friday Blogroll
Flowering Minds
Design of the Picture Book

Pinterest for Libraries

Voya Magazine’s “How to Use Pinterest for your Library”
Archived Webinar on Pinterest for Librarians--You must register, but it’s free.

Marge Loch-Wouters’ Pinterest boards full of articles, tips, and tricks for using Pinterest in libraries

Videos
Storyblocks from CLEL http://www.storyblocks.org/

YALSA’s Webinars on demand http://www.ala.org/yalsa/onlinelearning/webinars/webinarsondemand

YALSA Academy http://www.ala.org/yalsa/academy

Minnesota Library Association Annual Conference

Come join us!

Minnesota Library Association

 
The fabulous Sarah of YA Librarian Tales and I are presenting at MLA tomorrow, Thursday 10/4 at 11 am. Our talk is called "Connecting with Online Communities: Beyond the Social Media Buzz"* and is all about how to use the internet and social media to connect with other librarians and grow professionally despite time and money limitations.

Make sure to say hi even if you can't make it to the program--I'm really looking forward to meeting some of my online colleagues in person!

*The name we submitted is different than the name used in the conference materials. This is the name you'll see on the conference schedule if you're looking for us.