Being a brand new school librarian is both exciting and scary. All summer, you’ve planned for your new position, but today, you're feeling pretty lost.
Being a brand new school librarian is both exciting and scary. All summer, you’ve planned for your new position, but today, you're feeling pretty lost.
Being a brand new school librarian is both exciting and scary. All summer, you’ve planned for your new position, but today, you're feeling pretty lost.
Some school libraries are reinventing themselves as makerspaces, but this Ohio library took a slightly different approach and has seen incredible results.
Picture this: a tall, rail-thin woman of an indeterminate age with dark grey hair pulled back in a bun. The horn-rimmed classes perched at the tip of her nose give her a menacing look that just gives you the heebies. She's always crabby, wears all…
Truly, library school doesn't teach you about 95% of what you need to know as a school librarian. So, I've decided to dedicate a section of this blog to all the new librarians out there. Please know that the struggle is real. It isn't you; it's all of us. We've all been there, and we're here to help.
If you're interested in becoming a librarian, there are some key aspects you should know about the career path.
What I do
50+ "non-traditional" careers for library science grads, from research and information management to web design and nonprofit work.
Think you can’t take the librarian out of the library? You’d be wrong! Read on for eight kinds of opportunities for online librarian jobs!
Celebrating the guardians of all things literary.
I never really spent much time thinking about banned books until I began homeschooling. I noticed that the books I was reading with my kids frequently ended up on banned book lists. I enjoyed the
My husband says that librarians are some of the most radical people he’s ever met. There is truth in that. Libraries provide free access to knowledge and intellectual development to all membe…
Too many schools are producing non-readers at an alarming rate, but it doesn't have to be that way. Pernille Ripp and I talk about how to change things.
Topics include airport security, Stephen Colbert, Forever 21, Lucy Grealy and a surgeon who left his patient on the operating table to go cash his paycheck.
We want students to work at their own pace, but when one student is significantly slower than his peers, it can cause problems for him and for his teachers.
The Dongan Hills Library is located on 1617 Richmond Road, Staten Island, NY 10304. Our mission at The New York Public Library is to inspire lifelong learning, advance knowledge, and strengthen our communities. Like us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter and Tumblr. Why...it is your favorite library!
BuzzFeed asked a bunch of librarians at New York Comic-Con what books they'd recommend everyone read before they die.
Awesome Librarian Helps Hysterical School Girl Solve Who Hacked Her Paper - The internet has generated a huge amount of laughs from cats and FAILS. And we all out of cats.
Husband corrects wife's friend about breadwinner status, igniting an intense argument 🔥👀
Check out the cool stickers I just put on my book cart!
This collection of 59 thoughtful and charming quotes about libraries and librarians will lift and inspire you to grab your library card.
Checking prices on the net I often see strange and misleading book descriptions. I was alerted by Angus, a Bookride follower, to this fine example. It is one of those catchall descriptions that the cataloguer brings up with a programme like Typeit4me or cuts and pastes from a palette of such phrases. In this example the seller uses the exact phrase for over 12000 book descriptions - "Remains particularly and surprisingly well-preserved; tight, bright, clean and strong". It is not a bad phrase as they go, although 'remains' is an offputting word as it suggests the book is not in the best shape. This is slightly re-inforced by the word 'surprisingly' as if the cataloguer himself is surprised the book has survived at all. The whole thing has that upbeat, genteel, wheedling tone that is prevalent online. Sometimes this leads on to entreaties such as this: " Excellent reading on the subject. A good book to enjoy and keep on hand for yourself, or would make a GREAT GIFT for the fan / reader in your life. Reading is one of the great pleasures in life." One guy has "Seems like an interesting title!" in all his descriptions, however dull the book. Sometimes such entreaties are aligned with somewhat lousy descriptions: "Hard Cover. No Covers. Absorbent Brown Spine With Two Light Brown Ovals With Title Inside Of Them In Light And Dark Brown Letters, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Shelf, Edge And Corner Ware, Some Edge Tearing And Chipping. Hard Cover Cover BooK: Fine, 338 Numbered Pages, That Were Lightly Read, And Are Clean And Tight To The Spine, Slight Shelf, Corner And Edge Ware. This Expensive BooK, Is Hard To Find, Will Make An Excellent Addition To Your Own Personal Library Collection, Or As A Gift. " I realise 'fine' can encompass very slight handling wear and is surpassed by 'like new' and even the slightly dubious 'mint' but it cannot be associated with tears and chips! Also what in hell is an 'absorbent spine!' Capitalised descriptions (shouting) are often a sign of a less than experienced bookseller ('UNREAD AND AS NEW BOOK WITH MISSING TITLE PAGE - COVER WITH LIGHT DAMAGE - COMPLETELY UNREAD - EXCELLENT CONDITION - READ ONCE CAREFULLY.') A missing title page, often mentioned as if it is nothing, is to my mind an almost fatal flaw...also while we are on the subject an ex library book can never be fine. The subject is endless and there is an excellent 5000+ thread at the ABE forum collecting and discussing naff descriptions, it is called 'Disgusting - Must we have this?' Internecine warfare sometimes breaks out when a seller spots his description and resolutely defends it, but it has some real gems. Likewise John Baxter collected some truly awful Ebay descriptions at the back of his Pound of Paper. My favourite are descriptions in what I call the Alain Robbe Grillet style. The great nouveau roman writer can spend 2 pages describing a man's face in such relentless detail that at the end of it you have no idea what the chap actually looks like. You have web descriptions where every line begins "this book..." often rhapsodising about the sharpness of the corners and others where the greatness of the condition is emphasised by negation (' no fraying, no tears, no marks or soiling, no chips, no pieces missing, no wrinkles or creases...) but the real Robbe- Grillet person gets into serious details and minutiae. On a $100 Franklin Mint bound in their trademark spam leather a seller notes -'gilt edges which when held to harsh light at an oblique angle there might be seen a few tiny lines or striations, perhaps not visible in ordinary light, and deemed very minor...' Pyjama Bob at Chapel Books just down the road in Suffolk is a master of the ultra precise description, here is a fairly restrained description of a £60 Penguin. "Slight browning to pages, contents otherwise clean and unmarked. A little faint foxing or soiling to covers and spine rather browned. Joints show a little rubbing and small (5mm) split to base of upper joint, but covers are firm. Faint creasing to corners and a few light indentations show up when they catch the light..." I am reminded of the late and much missed Peter Joliffe -- he used to say he would never describe a book as fine, there was always some imperfection to note, however slight... [To be continued]
Way back in the swinging '70s, movie producer Sol Schick was the guy behind such cheesy classics as "Quarry: Bigfoot!," Noah's Ark: Found at Last!" and "Heavenly Visitors from the Hell Above." But when he's murdered - at a film festival! - with a piece of Noah's Ark! - THE LIBRARIANS are drawn into the mystery. Can their combination of special skills, obsessive curiosity and knowledge of forgotten lore figure out who - or what - spelled doom for Schick? And as they delve deeper into his past, is it possible that things are not as they seem and that all his crazy, wild movie...were telling the truth?
Book mirror: A very cool alternative to bringing a bookish vibe into any room.Never Forget tee: "Remember when men were men, librarians were women, and computers were the size of a room? Good ti
Cheryl Mizerny wants this to be the school year she cultivates a culture of kindness among her students as she joins with them to create The Kind Classroom.
Nostalgia is a powerful substance. And everyone carries it within themselves. It can take us to a distant time and place in a heartbeat. All we need is the right trigger. Luckily, the subreddit of the same name has plenty of them.
They really help our readers.
Library Literature Worth Reading
NewsCampaign to save the Women’s Library – Museum’s Association. “An online campaign has been launched to save the Women’s Library in London, following an announcement last…
Mnemonics help us remember things: Roy G. Biv, Every Good Boy Does Fine. But there's one you may not have heard of, and it might be the coolest one of all.
I love teaching poetry and can't wait to share these fun ideas with you! This post is full of ways you can make poetry fun in your middle school classroom.
In celebration of Banned Book Week, I’ve decided to re-read my favorite childhood book, Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret by Judy Blume. I was nine or ten when I read it for the first time and it changed my life. Really. Here’s a list of Top Banned/Challenged Books -- the ones I’ve read are in bold: The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee The Color Purple by Alice Walker Ulysses by James Joyce Beloved by Toni Morrison The Lord of the Flies by William Golding 1984 by George Orwell Lolita by Vladmir Nabokov Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck Catch-22 by Joseph Heller Brave New World by Aldous Huxley Animal Farm by George Orwell The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell Native Son by Richard Wright One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway The Call of the Wild by Jack London Go Tell it on the Mountain by James Baldwin All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien The Jungle by Upton Sinclair Lady Chatterley's Lover by D.H. Lawrence A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess The Awakening by Kate Chopin In Cold Blood by Truman Capote The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie Sophie's Choice by William Styron Sons and Lovers by D.H. Lawrence Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut A Separate Peace by John Knowles Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh Women in Love by D.H. Lawrence The Naked and the Dead by Norman Mailer Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser Rabbit, Run by John Updike Some of my favorites: Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson Twilight by Stephenie Meyer Harry Potter by J.K. Rowling For more info: http://www.ala.org/ala/issuesadvocacy/banned/bannedbooksweek/index.cfm
If your child devoured Raina Telgemeier's Smile, Sisters, and Drama, here are a few other books they might enjoy.
Those of us who work in libraries or have spent many hours in them can tell you one of the things that's present in most -- if not all -- libraries is the
Hi-lo books are the way to go for many older struggling readers.
You have to pick up these books.
Your child’s data is feeding the machine. If you REFUSE to allow it, you protect your children and their education. Why parents use their freedom to refuse. If someone asks you these question…
In RBM, not all sites are monitored the same way and not all source data is 100% verified. This can make it seem like the monitoring that IS happening isn’t as rigorous or in-depth as it should be…with “should” being the operative word. What monitoring “should” look like is based on our past experience […]
Create a classroom of writers with these fun writing activities for middle school students! There's something for everyone!
Check out these memes about overdue library books that will make you laugh out loud. We've also included three library display inspiration to help you sk for library books to be returned.
