CSLA Sunday

Sunday's schedule started with the last two concurrent sessions. At 8 in the morning I was in "Creating a Library Website to Teach Information Literacy." This was a different way of using a library website. The presenter advocated linking to other sites which already had good uup-to-date link lists on topics of interest to our students. Her library website is located at http://hamilibrary.com/.

The last session I attended was "Building Bridges between Picture Books and High School Curriculum." The presenters had many ideas for using picture books to introduce subjects studied in high school. I have a hand-out with some of the titles they suggested.

The conference ended with one of my favorite parts of the conference--the author/illustrator brunch. The line for it was already long when I got out of my last session. Everyone wants to get a good seat, but you don't really know what the best seat will turn out to be. The tables are numbered and the numbers are randomly drawn to determine which author or illustrator will be seated at your table. Our table got Mike Thaler. You, like I, might not recognize the name, but you have probably all encountered one of his books. He wrote a whole series that began with The Teacher from the Black Lagoon. The speakers for the luncheon were Pamela Duncan Edwards and Henry Cole. They have worked together as author and illustrator on several books. Their stories about how they came to create books were amusing. They ended their presentation by having Mr. Cole draw a picture while Ms Edwards read their new children's book, The Old House. Look for the picture when you view the PowerPoint in class. Finally, the day and the conference were at an end. As a parting gift, we each got to choose a free book for our library. I'd show it to you, but someone has already checked it out.

CSLA--Saturday

Saturday morning we started off at 8 with concurrent sessions. The first I attended was "Books, Blogs, and the Ties that Bind." Library science students, are you interested in helping set up an online book club? If there is enough interest, we'll do it. The next session was "School Library Learning 2.0: California's Summer Fun." This was for the people who participated last summer in a self-paced online course on web 2.0 for libraries. It was fun to see the faces of the people we knew only by screen names. I signed up to be a cheerleader for people who take the course this winter. My final session for the day was called "Booktalks: a Blueprint for Building Readers." I served as facilitator for the session. (That means I introduced the speaker, made sure people got handouts, gave the presenter a gift from CSLA, and collected evaluations at the end. If there had been any technical problems, it would have been my job to get help.) Booktalks are one of the skills we will be developing in the spring semester. The presenter also had a handout on books for people who liked A Child Called "It." I frequently get requests like that, so now I have ideas for my next book-buying expedition.

Speaking of buying books, I bought the CYRM books for both primary and young adults, as well as some others that were just too good to pass up. There will be cataloging to do when I get back to school.

Later in the afternoon we gathered for the membership meeting. This was a chance for members to express concerns and get feedback from the officers. The day ended with the CYRM Award Banquet. The speaker was supposed to be Karen Hesse, whose books some of you have been reading. She was unable to attend, but the illustrator of her picture book for older youth, The Cats in Krasinski Square spoke to us about how she and Ms Hesse collaborated on the book and how she did the research for the book. It was an interesting evening.

CSLA Conference-Friday

I forgot to mention yesterday that at the exhibit hall the poster contest winners were on display. I am sorry to say that none of our poster were awarded a prize, but I was happy to see that the quality of the winners was so high.

The day began at 8 a.m. with a general session. This is where the new officers and the conference sponsors are introduced. The guest speaker, Paul Janeczko, a well known children's poet, spoke about the importance of getting children excited about reading. After an exclusive exhibit time (That means that we didn't have to skip something else to visit the exhibit hall.), The concurrent sessions began. There were many different sessions to choose from in each time slot. For session A, I chose the California Young Reader Medal 2007-8 Overview, because those are the books we read to the kindergarteners in the spring and because I would like to get the high school students reading the books on their level. Next, I selected a session on new ideas for library orientation, but it was full, so I ended up in a session titled "Web 2.0 Tools--Podcasts, Blogs, RSS, Wikis, and More!" The presenter was in my master's class and always has useful ideas. The last session was "Library Website 2.0: Developing Interactive Websites for Teens"--more good ideas to play with. No conference would be complete without food. I had lunch at a local restaurant with one of my school library mentors: she was the person who first got me started about getting my library media credential. The day ended with the President's Dessert Reception. The food was good and it was a good opportunity to network with other school librarians.

p.s. Remember the raffles? I won the last Harry Potter audibook. a 17 CD set.

CSLA 2007-Ontario, CA

It's been a busy and productive 2 days so far. Thursday afternoon I attended 2 workshops. The first, on Collaborating with classroom teachers, covered research and practical ideas for creating better assignments for students. The second was about creating an effective library websites. Both of them were full of good ideas that I can put to use when I get back to school. I hope my library science students will get involved in the (currently non-existent) library webpages. The evening was devoted to the opening of the exhibit hall. A corporate sponsor provided food and live music as we browsed the various exhibts. To get an idea of the variety of the exhibits ask to see the PowerPoint presentation when I get back to school. Many of the exhibitors gave out candy to encourage you to slow down and hear their presentations. Many of the vendors also asked for contact information in the form of raffle entries. (More about that next time.)