Tales from a Loud Librarian

Read my blog post on YALSA's The Hub I strongly believe that belonging to professional organizations is crucial to my development to be a better librarian. Some of the organizations that I belong to include: JSLA, LASL , LLA , LACUE , ALA , AASL , and YALSA . Yes, it can get expensive because I have to pay for these memberships as my school does not, but through these organizations, I can network with my peers, get professional development, and find materials online that can help me do my job. Because I get so much out of both the state and national organizations to which I belong, I also like to give back. So when I was asked to chair the YALSA Local Area Task Force for ALA 2018 , I agreed. ALA is having its annual conference in New Orleans at the end of June. I am beyond excited because I have not attended since 2013. Though I belong to the school librarian's division of ALA, AASL, I have done most of my volunteering with the Young Adult division, YALSA.  Part of ...

My Reading Life  Sign I created for the door to my office I was inspired to write this blog post after seeing the infographic created by Library Girl Jennifer LaGarde called, When Adults Don't Read, Kids Lose . I remember years ago when I was an elementary school librarian talking to a fourth grade teacher who admitted that she never read. I couldn't imagine that and was horrified. Reading feeds my soul and though my reading habits have changed over the last 25 years that I have been a librarian, I still really value reading in my life. I think everyone should. How can we expect our students to value reading if we don't read?  I have a motto for my library: All Readers Welcome. I tell my students that I chose that because unlike an English teacher who wants you to read specific books, I don't care what you read. I want you to read what brings you pleasure. It is important for these young people to find what types of reading brings them enjoyment now before th...

In 2014 was the first time that I set up a display for Blind Date with a Book  (BDWB). The kids loved it. When I set up the display the following year, I had students add some information about each book on the wrapping so that students could make an informed choice. This really improved the whole blind date experience.  What will this new read be? Then I said the heck with this, it is so difficult to wrap the books and keep wrapping additional books after the books get checked out that I stopped putting up the display. This year I have seen so many cute displays on social media, and Pinterest is filled with BDWB display ideas . I decided it was time to bring it back to my library. She is a happy camper! I needed to figure out a simpler way to package the books, list some qualities of the book, and be ready to add new books to the display as they get checked out. I made a nice design on Canva to print out, and you can find it here and feel free to copy an...

I was looking at Goodreads online, which I rarely do, and found a nice infographic illustrating the books that I read over the last year. I thought it was pretty cool so I wanted to share it with you here. I didn't want to just add a link, so I searched the web to find a way to embed it into my blog. I found embed.ly  which allows you to create a free card out of any website. I thought that was pretty nifty, and it worked well for me here.  Ms. Kahn's Year in Books

I run two book groups at Patrick Taylor. My high school book group, Bookmarked , was created in the fall of 2007 which was my second year as librarian at the school. The students really wanted a library club, but the square footage of the library was so small that I could not imagine how any students could do any actual library work. Instead I created a book discussion group. Not only did we meet to talk books, but I tapped these students to help me with fundraisers and special programming like Teen Read Week. Helping me with these special activities seemed to appease the members. I waited until February of 2009 to institute a book discussion group for my middle school students called BRiMS, or Books Rule in Middle School . Both of the groups meet during lunch, and this year, the school added a third lunch. Now BRiMS is made up of only 6th and 7th graders. Bookmarked has 8th-12th grade students. This has actually worked well because in 2014 and 2015, Bookmarked lost a lot of members w...

SLJ Battle of the Kids Books For the 2015 Battle of the Books or Mock BOB, the students made their selections of their favorite books in Round 1 by completing a Google form that I created.  I was hoping to get more kids to participate this year by asking them to vote virtually rather than last year's battle when students made live presentations defending each of the titles. Only 45 students cast their vote in this first round, which is 10% of the school and about the same number as participated in each round in 2014. I sent the students a link to the form via email, put the link in the daily announcements that are sent to all students and teachers, and gave the students five days to make their selections. The Google form was an easy way to set up the voting because I could insert a picture of the book covers with blurbs. I had students help me create the blurbs about each of the books. You can see two examples of the 8 battles below.  Battle 4 click the pictu...

The first book fair ever to be held at PFTSTA ran from Monday, October 6th through Thursday, October 9th. It was a long four days but definitely worth it. We sold $4700 of books, posters, pens, erasers, etc. I had lots of help at the cash register from the members of Bookmarked and BRiMS. They did a super job of helping make it all happen. The middle school students had a great time picking out fun reads, but surprisingly, the high school students did, too. Not much more needs to be said except the place was packed on Wednesday during the middle school grandparents' breakfast. Unfortunately, I was too busy to take pictures while the special visitors were in the library shopping with their grandchildren. Below are photos that capture the week for me.    None of those pictures of students with books in their hands were posed. The kids were engrossed in the titles that they found for sale on the shelves. 

Earlier this week, I found out that my project for buying books for my middle school book group was funded on Donors' Choose . I am thrilled, and I know that the kids will be also. Because of the kind donations, the students will be reading the following books during one of our monthly meetings: