SRP Is Done! Long Live SRP!

All right! We made it!

Don't forget to pass along your feedback about Summer Reading to your SRP branch rep.

Is there anything that went especially well this year? Did your branch try anything new? Did you have any rough spots? How did your programs go? Did we meet our goals?

If you weren't directly involved with the Children's Summer Reading Program at your branch, find someone who was and ask them for their 2 cents.

As Seen at Santa's Workshop

Okay, I'm on vacation! I will be posting from time to time while I'm gone, but won't be checking in every day. Feel free to post yourselves as well! In the meantime...



...is an Information Stroller like a Roving Reference Librarian?

Read Roger

I mentioned that one of my goals was to keep up with my professional reading; from time to time I’ll point you towards some of the blogs and resources that I love.

One of my favorites is Read Roger. Roger Sutton is the editor in chief of Horn Book; his vast knowledge, wide perspective, and pointed wit always leave me with something to think about.

This recent post is a great example: he starts off with a note about a West Side Story revival, makes a connection to a new children’s title, winding up with a larger question about children’s literature as a whole, pointing us towards a thoughtful critical essay along the way.

(PS: He also comments on the Stuart Little essay from the New Yorker!)

Online Storytimes

Melissa and I have been working on putting up online storytimes on Tales' Treehouse (Melissa is much better at this than me, but I'm practicing!) to engage parents and kids in online literacy activities--for whatever reason: maybe they couldn't make it to a face-to-face storytime or maybe they're just spending some time together online and need a little guidance. Our goal is to provide some online books, song clips, photos/videos/illustrations, rhymes, games/activities, printable projects, and literacy tips around a particular theme. We hope to have two new ones to feature each month. Maybe you can direct patrons to these during your storytimes or in helping someone on the computers...Let us know if you have any great resources to share or would like to see particular themes.

ALD Training Classes

The September Training Class list is up now on the StaffNet Training & Staff Development page; check it out to see if there’s anything you can use. And it might not be too late to look at August as well—Children’s Databases and Homework Databases classes are both on that list.

One of my goals...

Something I'm interested in is how to make our collection for parenting issues and topics stronger and more accesible. I am a patron of the Lone Tree library in Douglas and am so impressed with their collection which they've named HIP (help in parenting). They have all the potty training, dealing with death, manners, new siblings, going to the doctors etc. picture books all in one place and all the parenting materials intended for adults all in one place. It is incredibly helpful and I've used that collection often.
I'm not crazy about how we currently shelve our parenting material at Smoky...some of it is in the sad, outdated parent collection we have, some in picture books and some upstairs in adult non-fiction.
How are other libraries handling this? How can we improve it?

Hello

Hi there,

My name is Elisabeth Wright and I've been with the district and Smoky Hill since 2001. I've done story times, programs, bookclubs for the little guys as well as some teen stuff. I recently came back from maternity leave and am back in the swing of things (a *little* sleep deprived) with my 2 storytimes and upcoming bookclubs and programs. I'm looking forward to some new ideas to spruce up what sometimes feels like tired old, boring (hopefully only to me) story times.

Along with my baby, I have a 5 year old son who is a great guinea pig when it comes to trying out new songs, fingerplays and books.

I think this is going to be a great group and I'm glad to be a part of it!