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Early Elementary STEAM: Vegetable (& Fruit) Prints
We have two-month program cycles at my library, and during each cycle, we aim to have formal, registered STEAM program opportunities for each of the age ranges in my purview as Youth & Family...
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Let's Talk! Babies Need Words Every Day - The Blog Tour
Hello, friends and fellow literacy warriors! I'm pleased as punch to be participating in Day 1 of the Babies Need Words Every Day Blog Tour.In case you'd like a refresher, Babies Need Words Every Day...
View ArticleLibrarianship on YouTube: Milk Planets
Today is the third annual Family Science Expo at my library, and I'll be running one of the staff-led activity stations from our craft room. What type of science will we do in there, you ask? We're...
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Tabletop Coding, plus more resources for coding with kids from WisCode Literati
I'm a fan of coding and other computer science activities in libraries--and I hope more and more folks will be inspired in this area, too, what with President Obama requesting $4 billion in the next...
View ArticleLibrarianship on YouTube: How to Make a Volcano
Right now and through the month of April, we're exploring all things earth science in the BOOMbox. That means rocks, natural disasters, ecosystems... all sorts of exciting natural phenomena that are...
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The Many Tastes of Salsa
Every winter/early spring at my library is marked by our participation in a community-wide initiative, Coming Together in Skokie and Niles Township*. This year, the initiative is called ¡Viva! and the...
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Unprogramming on FYI: The Public Libraries Podcast
Earlier this month, I chatted on the phone with Kathleen Hughes from PLA about the programming strategy developed by Marge Loch-Wouters and myself, unprogramming. That conversation was edited into a...
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Community Aspirations for Strategic Planning
We've just wrapped up the strategic planning process at my library. It was a robust multi-month process, and we absolutely wanted lots of patron and community feedback to inform the direction of the...
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Gratitude Graffiti at the Library
Back in January during my library's annual staff day, my department spent our meeting time giving spark talks--high-energy, three-minute pitches of ideas that we think are cool and that the library...
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Storytime in the Wild
Over the past year or so, we've been putting a fair amount of intention behind the partitioning of our youth department into spaces designated for specific age ranges. Part of the impetus for this...
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Librarianship on YouTube: All the Summer Reading Hype!
It's early July, which means we're in the trenches of summer reading. The people! The reading recommendations! The sign-up questions! THE HOARDS OF PEOPLE!It's a glorious time for public libraries, but...
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I'm Taking the Pledge #Libraries4BlackLives #M4BLPledge
As a librarian, I find it is insufficient to simply espouse equality and equity. I must do more with the knowledge and resources I help to steward. As a librarian, I must advocate for opportunities and...
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Wrapping up Summer Reading with a Field Day
We wrapped up summer reading at my library 10 days ago after an eleven-week program. Our reading clubs committee, which comprises folks from youth, adult, programming, and marketing, created our own...
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Take the Our Voices Pledge
Over the past few months, I've been part of a dedicated and inspiring team of individuals from multiple corners of the book ecosystem. We're the Advisory Council for the Our Voices, which launched...
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The Civic Lab: Skokie's Civic Engagement Library
Civic engagement is on our minds at my library. Not just because this is an election year--although that certainly adds a layer to the conversation and mood around civic engagement in our community....
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Pop-Up Stories & Discussion in the Civic Lab
In this first iteration of our Civic Lab here at my library, most of the modes for participation are passive: voting on the major question, browsing the resources, and reflecting on or responding to...
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In the Civic Lab: Let's Talk About Standing Rock
When we started the Civic Lab at the end of this past summer, we knew one of our major goals would be to engage our community in conversations around current events and issues in a landscape with...
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Together at the Table: A Civic Lab Program for MLK Day
My library aims to observe Martin Luther King, Jr. Day each year with multigenerational programming that engages our community on issues from Dr. King's work and themes in his speeches and writing....
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Actually, She Did That: The Civic Lab for Women's History Month
The team of folks here at my library who curate the Civic Lab were having a meeting a few weeks ago where we were discussing potential topics for future Civic Lab pop-ups. Sometimes we tie our pop-ups...
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Program Kits for Summer Bookmobile Pop-Ups
Two summers ago, I wrote about our forays into pop-up programming for the summer. I mentioned in that post that I'd be assessing this volunteer-staffed, in-the-library, weekly activity model for the...
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How do you measure engagement? What we learned during Summer Reading 2017
Starting with this year, my role in summer reading is a specific one: I work at developing and implementing our measurement tools and strategies for capturing program outcomes and other evaluative...
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The Boot Camp Model for Deeper Informal Learning
A few years back, I read about the Fayetteville Free Library's forays into Geek Girls Camp--a weeklong summertime program during which the same group of girls came to the library every day to explore,...
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Hands-on Learning & the Future of Learning
Libraries are at a juncture right now--a sort of identity crisis, if you will. Many libraries are reporting downward trends in circulation and other traditional output metrics. Yet many libraries are...
View ArticleThere’s No Room for “Priceless” in My Advocacy
I’m rather disappointed by something that was shared with me online over the weekend, and that thing is a particular Libraries Transform campaign Because statement that apparently was voted the best...
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Discussing Diversity Stats on Reading While White
Today I've got a guest post on the Reading While White blog, where I'm talking about what types of things librarians, publishing industry folks, and anyone interested in diversity in books for youth...
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