Tales from a Loud Librarian

Below is my acceptance speech for the AASL Information Technology Pathfinder Award Secondary. I wanted to post the entire speech because some of the people that I thank were not able to attend the luncheon where I received the award. This was definitely one of the huge highlights of a 30 year teaching career, 21 years as a school librarian.  Let me tell you that running a school library is the best job on Earth! Winning this award makes me smile, big time. I am very excited to accept this award from AASL today. Winning this helps validate for me all the hard work that I have done over my 30 years of teaching.  In ‘91 I left the classroom to become a school librarian. I took over a library that had a Macintosh SE computer running a circulation program that no one else in my district was using. I had to back up the library on dozens of floppy disks, and we still used a card catalog. Now let’s fast forward 21 years later, my students can download an app on their smart

A couple of weeks ago I received  a call from Steve Zalusky at ALA. He writes for the online magazine, atyourlibrary. He was calling because he wanted to do an article about technology in school libraries. He had the press release about the award that I am going to receive from AASL. He also wanted some additional talking points from me. I was sitting at home on the computer when he called. I was sort of taken aback, so when I talked, I thought that I might have sounded a little lame. When I write, I get a chance to edit and edit and edit some more so I don't sound like a blathering fool. Lucky for me, I blathered in the right direction. I sounded half way intelligent. As always, I am very passionate about my school library.  Open here to read the article.

If you are reading this, then I already arrived in California. This is my first time attending an ALA conference away from home. Living in New Orleans, I have been lucky to attend several conferences over the years just a few minutes from my house. Last year I had so much fun at ALA that I wanted to go this year. Without school funds to attend this conference, I decided to apply for an award that would pay for the airfare and flight to California. I didn't think that I had a chance to win, but I found out in April that I did in fact win. On Monday, June 25th, I will be receiving the American Association of School Librarians Information Technology Pathfinder Award for High School. There is a special luncheon being held, and I will write more on the award later. First stop when I arrive in Anaheim is to meet up with one of my former students for lunch. She was in first grade when I became a school librarian. I can't wait to see her and find out all about her life as an adult

Two weeks ago, Bookmarked, the high school library book group at Patrick Taylor Academy was introduced as the new review teen team for SLJ Teen. Reviews will be published twice a month for the next year. Anyone can subscribe to this free newsletter. So open here to complete the form for subscription, and you can get a copy of the teen's reviews in your inbox every two weeks.  Open here to read this edition's reviews . Click here to read the reviews

Our last day of school was May 25th. I have been a reading fool since the end of May. Boy, does it feel good to get my reading groove back. This happens every year. The end of the year is extremely stressful. I may have a book going, but reading is not a priority. My priority is getting the seniors through graduation and closing the library with only a few lost books and no students left on the library indebtedness list. I accomplished my goals, but some of the books that I was anticipating had to sit quietly until I could find the time to sink my teeth into them. Here are the highlights of what I have been reading over the last couple of weeks: A couple of the books I had to read because I was asked to review them. I read  Ghosts of the Titanic  by Julie Lawson. I can't reveal what I thought until the review is published in  Library Media Connection , but I am always looking for titles to recommend to middle school students. This one is for the Titanic fanatic who also

The high school book group, Bookmarked, will be reviewing books for  SLJ Teen , an enewsletter from School Library Journal . Check out our first article here:  Now Introducing Bookmarked .

A few months ago I watched a video from Scholastic promoting some of their new young adult titles for spring. Since the students in Bookmarked , the high school book group, are reading advanced reading copies (ARCs) for Teen's Top Ten , I thought that they would enjoy the video too because we had received many of the titles at school. One of the books that we received was The Letter Q: Queer Writers’ Notes to Their Younger Selves  edited by Sarah Moon and released May 1, 2012. I loved the premise of this work, and the idea that well respected published writers could offer some insights to young people today who are concerned or questioning their lives as LGBT people. These kids need all the love and support that they can get and putting good books on this topic on the shelves of our libraries is important.  Here is a description of this wonderful work of non-fiction:  In this anthology, sixty-four award-winning authors and illustrators such as Michael Cunningham, Amy B