From Silver to Gold and other conference ideas…

Hello to my loyal blog readers, from St. John’s, Newfoundland. I am having such a wonderful time at the conference and learning so much too!

Yesterday I walked up Signal Hill – about a 2 1/2 hour walk practically all uphill. Coming home was really easy after that. Then I met all of the students to CLA and attended the Opening Reception where a Newfoundland band played traditional tunes. I ate dinner with my roommate Janice at Sprouts restaurant and that was really yummy!

Today I started off the day going to the First Timers Breakfast. The food was hot, plentiful and yummy too! Omelets, French toast, waffles, fruit, more than I’d ever eat at home! I met lots of people too. The other students here are really great and its so interesting to hear their thoughts on library school too.

Afterwards I attended the opening ceremonies. The mayor of Newfoundland spoke about how the province has 96 libraries – more libraries per capita then in any other province. I was truly impressed by that fact. The main speaker, Linda Duxbury was excellent and if you ever have the chance to hear her speak, I truly recommend it. She was incredibly motivational and inspiring too. I can’t wait to get out there and be a librarian after hearing her talk. She spoke about generational differences and had everyone in the audience in stitches at times. Some of what she said was a bit generalized, however, it was definitely worth listening too and she had some really great points!

Afterwards I volunteered in the CLA store and was able to buy 4 books that were damaged for super cheap prices ($5 a piece).  All were to do with children’s librarianship: “Opening Doors to Children”, “One-Person Puppetry” and “Early Literacy Storytimes @ your library”. The other book I bought was “The Readers’ Advisory Guide to Genre Fiction”. I can’t wait until I have time to dig into them once I have some time. I don’t think I can go anywhere without buying books!

I attended a session”The Boomers are Coming! Supporting Positive Aging Through Public Library Services to Older Adults” presented by Allan Kleiman the Assistant Library Director of Old Bridge Public Library. Kleiman was an excellent speaker and had some really fascinating points. He argued that the Baby Boomers and older generations ought to have their own space in libraries. I walked into the session as a complete skeptic, but have been converted. Libraries should be creating programs to get older generations into the library. Creating programs that interest Boomers involves appealing to nostalgia – the Rolling Stones, Beatles and other things that this generation relates to make for well-attended programs that attract non-library users into the library. I wrote an article about this for the Signal and it’ll be published in the morning! I was so nervous about that as I am really self-conscious about my writing.

Then I attended a session “The Spirit of Place” with Bill Mitchell, Jean McKendry and Stephen Teeple which was another great session. We looked at library spaces, some of the considerations when designing/planning a library, Academic Library Design and the spirit of the library place from an architectural perspective.

My roommate for the conference, Janice, invited me to go with some of her friends for a tour to Cape Spear. The view was fabulous. We also checked out Petty Harbour too. It was quite pretty and really great to be able to get some photos. I’ll have to post them later to the blog! Janice and I went out to Kelly’s Pub for dinner and it was delicious pub fare.

Tomorrow I am going on the Fun Run, a jog around St. John’s to begin the day, so I’m going to sign out for now. The food, hospitality and people of St. John’s are truly wonderful and I really want to come back here for a trip again some day.

Raining in the library

Tonight the boys and girls made a rain storm in the library and listened to the sea through a conch shell.  They really seemed to love it and I sure had a lot of fun with that too.  I think I need to incorporate a more musical element like the rain storm every single week as its better than listening to a music CD and doing the actions.  Any ideas would be marvelous.

We read Whistling for Willie by Ezra Jack Keats, Five Little Ducks (and listened to the CD at the same time – Raffi), There’s a Sea in my Bedroom by Margaret Wild and Slinky Malinki by Lynley Dodd.  The kids really enjoyed everything.  I think Whistling for Willie they related to Peter not being able to whistle, they laughed when Peter pretended he was his Dad and also liked that Peter learned to whistle by the end of the book.  With There’s a Sea in my Bedroom, the boys and girls loved making the sounds of the sea and seeing a conch shell.  They enjoyed the familiarity of Five Little Ducks and loved the repetition in Slinky Malinky, the curiousity of the cat and his feathered friend and the playing with words too.  We read some poems from Jelly Belly too.  It was a great evening and I was shocked that there was such a large turnout more than double the usual crowd.  I’m going to have to really think about what I’ll do when I come back for storytime in 2 weeks – not sure how I’ll match tonights performance.  Really it seems that every week I am improving and its all about practicing and learning as you go along with it.  Tonight I was especially nervous being that there was a larger crowd than usual.  Every week the group seems to double in size so I am wondering what is going to happen in two weeks when I return.

Kiss, Kiss! by Margaret Wild

The boys and girls at my storytime this week loved this book by Margaret Wild about a baby hippopotamus who chases after a dragonfly and goes on a journey where he hears “kiss kiss” as each of the baby animals kiss their mothers before they go out to play. Suddenly baby hippo realizes that he forgot something and retraces his steps home to Mama who is bathing in hidden in the deep water. Suddenly “Out of the deep, deep water appeared two eyes, two wiggling ears, and a pair of snorting nostrils. ‘Peekaboo!’ said Mama”, then she happily joins baby hippo for a “Kiss, kiss!” The illustrations are bold, bright and striking and the children loved them and the story. This one was good for the whole group aged 2-7 and they loved to make the “kiss kiss” sounds as baby hippo went through the savanna! Secretly, I quite enjoyed this book too and am going to try to find some of her other books at the library this week that the storytime group of kids and their parents might enjoy.

Kiss, Kiss! By Margaret Wild
New York : Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, 2004, c2003.
* Illustrations by:  Bridget Strevens-Marzo

Readers’ Advisory for the PM

Linwood Barclay had an article in today’s Toronto Star criticizing Yann Martel’s plan to send Prime Minister Stephen Harper a book every other week. As AKD points out, Barclay completely misses Martel’s point. Martel has initiated the website and the sending of books to Harper as an advocacy plan to create an awareness of the importance of the arts and the need for government funding and support.

Barclay writes that Harper should be able to read what he wants to in his spare time and argues that Martel should send gift certificates to the PM instead, so he can buy books of his own choice. Maybe Martel’s choices are appropriate, maybe they are not. In any event, Harper is representing the public and should have some knowledge of literature, especially Canadian literature and art. Does Harper know what he should be reading or what he would like to read? Should we really know what he reads in his spare time and is it right for us to judge? I’d say probably not.

As a future librarian, I am deeply offended by Barclay’s article. I can not believe that a member of the press would so under handedly throw such a deep insult to libraries ignoring the readers’ advisory services available to library users. I realized after reading the article over a second time that Barclay’s assault on libraries was unintentional and most readers will be completely oblivious and will remain unaware of the readers’ advisory services and expertise available to them in their local public libraries.

I should have written a letter to the editor earlier today to suggest that instead of sending gift certificates to bookstores that Martel should send the PM a LIBRARY CARD and the e-mail address and phone number of a librarian specializing in reader’s advisory services (fiction and/or non-fiction). Librarians are educated to provide this type of service, and there are some really great readers’ advisory services offered by libraries. The employees of large big box bookstores don’t usually have this expertise. Tomorrow if I am not so tired I really just might write a letter to the editor, if that isn’t too late.

The Glass Castle

The Glass Castle is an incredibly positive and reflective account of Walls’ childhood moving from one place to another and fluctuating from lower middle class to poverty.  It was clear from reading the book that I have taken many things for granted my entire life including the simplest of things like running water.  The truth is that I rarely consider that so many people live in such squalor conditions in Canada and America.  Reading this book gave me a window into a whole other world and a vision of what a strong and self-made woman truly is all about and some insight into what poverty truly is all about.  Walls argues that “sometimes people get the lives that they want” while denying her own background and her parents homelessness.  (p. 256)  The book is well written and told from the heart.  The account is loaded with truth and writing it must have required Walls’ to confront everything in her life.   As a reader, I admire Walls for her honest writing and her  inner strength to  overcome  any obstacle that ever got in her way.  I can’t wait to hear what is said about this book in the SOLS non-fiction readers’ advisory mapping session I will be attending later this week.

Dinosaurs…

I am feeling a bit like a dinosaur – I am so old that I can’t remember what I liked to do when I was 8-11 years old!  I thought I’d always be a kid at heart, but now I’m beginning to wonder if maybe I am actually sadly growing up and leaving Neverland behind.

I have been put in charge of organizing a 45 minute session for 8-11 year olds about DINOSAURS this summer.   Anyone have any ideas?  Anything messy is out as the program will be held inside the library.  Also, its a drop in session so its anyone’s guess how many kids show up – could be anywhere from 15 to 40 – there’s no minimum or max. as far as I’m aware!

Welcome to my new Blog Space!

Thanks for visiting me at WordPress. I decided to make a change over from blogger as I liked the look of WordPress better and was getting bored with Blogger. I am noticing now though that some comments have disappeared. WordPress conveniently allowed me to import my blogger posts and comments – though it did take a bit of time. Anyway, please leave me with any comments/thoughts about what you think. I will be changing it around a bit in the next few weeks.