William Allen White Award Nominees Promoted on YouTube by Topeka Area Students

Robin Clark of Topeka & Shawnee County Public Library shared this with the members of Kanlib-L. What a wonderful idea!

Traditionally, William Allen White (WAW) book award nominee booktalks have been performed annually by Topeka & Shawnee County Public Library staff in person at local area schools. Realizing that it is impossible to reach all students in the service area in person, TSCPL bookmobile staffers Sandy Lane and Robin Clark collaborated with Topeka area gifted students to produce these highly creative student written and performed videos on Youtube featuring book reviews of the current William Allen White nominees for 2007-2008. The videos include interviews from “The Dr. Dyl Show”, several inanimate object reviewers, masked anonymous book reviewers, and one with exceptional headgear.

The boost in exposure includes posting the WAW video links on local, state, regional and national library listservs, the WAW official website, online library newsletters and blogs, as well as emails to area school media specialists.

Hopes are that as students view these peer produced video reviews, they will be more interested in reading the nominees and better prepared to vote by April 15, the end date for selection of the William Allen White award for 2008.

Videos may be viewed here:
http://www.youtube.com/profile_videos?user=TopekaLibrary

Leave a comment on Youtube and let us know what you think!

Booklist Book Group Blog

Does your library have a book discussion group? Are you always in the market for new books to discuss and information about those books? The American Library Association's Booklist magazine sponsors a blog called Book Group Buzz. The link is http://bookgroupbuzz.booklistonline.com. I did a quick browse of the blog. It might be enough to encourage me to leave my knitting groups and join a book discussion group. :)

The blurb that appeared in my inbox today reports:

This blog will entertain you as it keeps you up to date on all things book group. A corps of bloggers posts about books that worked well (or books that bombed), and provides organizational tips and read-alike insights. The blog also points you to Web sites that offer book club ideas, reading guides, and other helpful resources. This blog will entertain you as it keeps you up to date on all things book group. A corps of bloggers posts about books that worked well (or books that bombed), and provides organizational tips and read-alike insights. The blog also points you to Web sites that offer book club ideas, reading guides, and other helpful resources.

Parents Lead Fight for School Librarians in Seattle

Across the nation schools are trying to trim budgets by removing librarians from their libraries. We struggle with it here in Kansas just like the other states do. When I visit school librarians they are very aware that they need to be proactive in promoting their services and their value to their schools.

Librarians know that libraries are essential to education. One of the hottest topics for both K-12 and Academic Libraries is Teacher/Librarian Co-operation that brings library materials into the classroom in direct support of teaching units. They work everyday to remind teachers that they are not limited to the resources in their classrooms. The library puts a world of knowledge at their fingertips.

It's refreshing to hear that parents see this too. In Washington State, parents are standing up and demanding that the school libraries be staffed with trained librarians. In Seattle, Washington a loose-knit group of parents began defending their librarians and school libraries. They did e-mail campaigns and created a newsletter. They went to Spokane and lobbied their legislature.

The Los Angeles Times on December 23, 2007 reported

This month, they hand-delivered 2,500 signatures to a state government committee examining Washington's arcane school-funding system. "We did it to find out if anybody cared," said Layera Brunkan, who started the petition drive with Susan McBurney. Their children's elementary school was affected by the cuts.

"We realized that the school libraries are hemorrhaging, and it was far worse than we ever imagined," said Layera Brunkan.

State legislators, accustomed to professional lobbyists and official representatives of public education's many special interest groups, embraced the parents-turned-activists.

GOP state Rep. Skip Priest was buttonholed by the Spokane parents. He sits on the Basic Education Finance Joint Task Force, which will recommend education funding changes to the Legislature next year.

Here's a link to the full article from the Los Angeles Times as reported in American Libraries Direct. http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-librarians23dec23,1,6494151.story?ctrack=2&cset=true