Previously in this series Re-Vamping Summer Reading, Part One: Adding Passive Programming & Tracking Re-Vamping Summer Reading, Part Two: Those Darn Prizes No more cheap plastic crap! No more cheap plastic crap! Keep saying it to yourself (and your administration!) until it is imprinted on your brain. Your summer programs don’t need it, your patrons…
Also in this series: Re-Vamping Summer Reading, Part One: Adding Passive Programming & Tracking Re-Vamping Summer Reading, Part Three: Super-Action Play Packs It is the eternal question of youth services in a public library. What the heck do we do about the darn summer reading prizes? How do we stop kids from cheating? WHY are we…
Babies Need Words! It is critical that as librarians, we all work on bridging the 3o million word gap. I know. When you hear 30 million words it seems almost insurmountable and certainly it seems out of your hand as a librarian. But the fact is, we can start bridging that gap in our every day programs…
One of the questions I see come up most often online is “how do you do library tours?” And I understand why because I struggled with this too. How did we make classes visiting our library an actually productive experience instead of just come check-box for teachers to kill an hour? I did a lot of…
There’s a slogan in London regarding their mass transit system that has become something of a rallying cry for various causes: Mind the Gap. In London’s Underground this means make sure you pay attention when you’re disembarking. It is this slogan that kept running through my mind when reading Laura Ruby’s masterful young adult novel…
Many moons ago we got a patron comment that the person loved our storytimes for their older kids, but their younger child was too little for “flashcards and long stories.” (I like to sometimes start older kid storytime sessions with color/shape/animal flashcards to have the kids make sounds, guess shapes, etc.) This was a real…
Like many of you, I want to provide the homeschoolers in my community with programming relevant and interesting to them. Many homeschoolers are heavy library users so it made sense to design a program for them. Anyway, we’re always looking for more school year programs for school age kids so why not use this demographic?…
I’m finally back from vacation and back on track now that school has started. PHEW is there any rush like the end of summer programs meeting the beginning of the school year? After all the delays and holidays I am finally returning to Lock & Mori which was released YESTERDAY – wheeeeee! You might remember my…
Yes. Yes, it’s exactly what you’re thinking right now. Yes. It’s a broody, brilliant teenage Sherlock Holmes solving mysteries and sharing kisses alongside the troubled teenage genius Miss James “Mori” Moriarty. I am guessing that your reaction is probably similar to mine the first time I heard about this book and then saw the delightful…
One of my co-workers called this “the perfect library program” and I have to agree! It’s also SUPER SIMPLE and BASICALLY FREE and has a huge age range appeal. What’s not to love!? We opened a new branch library after years and years of planning. (My library system only has two locations – our larger main location…
