The 2008 ISLMA (Illinois School Library Media Association) conference is right around the corner.  If you’re not signed up yet, you better hurry up!

The conference will be held November 6-8, 2008 at the Sheraton in Arlington Heights, Illinois. Check out the ISLMA website for more information or to register.

There will be wonderful presentations, information and a chance to have breakfast with Jordan Sonnenblick (the 2008 winner of the Rebecca Caudill Award).

If you’re a library media specialist in Illinois, you should be an ISLMA member if you’re not already!  You get access to valuable resources and a chance to connect with other LMCs throughout Illinois.

I’m registered to go, so see you there!

Check out the Banned Books & Authors section of the Banned Books Website and learn about 10 banned books and authors.  Can you discover more banned books?  Find one more banned book and the reason it was banned.  Reply to this post and share the title, author, the reason the book was banned and whether you agree or disagree with the reason the book was banned.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by: J.K. Rowling
The Chocolate War by: Robert Cormier
Starting With Alice by: Phyllis Reynolds Naylor
Of Mice and Men by: John Steinbeck
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by: Maya Angelou
Fallen Angels by: Walter Dean Myers
It’s Perfectly Normal by: Robie Harris
Scary Stories by: Alvin Schwartz
The Adventures of Captain Underpants by:Dav Pilkey
Forever by: Judy Blume

Click here to take the poll!

Since Follett has been buying up many automated systems lately, there weren’t too many other brands left for me to choose. After reviewing several other automated systems, I decided to purchase Follett’s latest automated system called Destiny.

Destiny is a completely web based automated system. Students can use any computer with Internet access to view the catalog for the school library. Every classroom has several computers with Internet access and will be able to search the school library catalog from their classroom when needed,

There are several ways Destiny allows students and teachers to search. You can search by keyword, title, author, subject and series. If any of these results do not provide the user with what they were looking for, there is also an advanced search option which allows the user to narrow their search.

There are several added options that my school purchased that I believe to be valuable resources to students. The first is TitlePeek. This feature adds a picture of the book’s cover to each listing for the book; sort of like Amazon.com. The image of the book’s cover is connected to it’s ISBN number. So, if I have a 1992 copy of Bridge to Terabithia, TitlePeek will show the 1992 cover, not the cover with the movie images on it.

The second added feature my school purchased is called WebPath Express. When a user preforms a search, they will of course see all the materials that the school library has to offer. If you subscribe to WebPath Express, teacher-approved websites are also displayed in the search results. This is especially nice because the students are already on the Internet to search the catalog, so all they have to do is click on the link to view the website.

I have only begun to explore all the possibilities this automated system offers since I am just working on importing all the materials in my library right now into Destiny. I am excited to become an automated library and can’t wait to introduce Destiny to all my students!

Before I began weeding, I located my school districts’ policy on weeding and used that to determine what books should be weeded and which books could stay. After about a week or so of non-stop work, I finally had the library weeded (I had dusty, dirty hands and clothes to prove it). I weeded out over 400 books!! There were books that said “when we go to the moon someday…”, computer books from 1970, and country books about East and West Germany. Come on! It took me several more weeks to re-organize the library and put the non-fiction books in order by Dewey, establish my fiction section, create my easy book section and find room for my (little) Spanish and Polish bi-lingual sections. I later also decided I needed to separate my Young Adult (YA) books out from my fiction so my older students could locate them easier.

My dilemma with the books that I weeded out of the library was what to do with all of them! My principal wanted me to give the books away to students, however I disagreed. I weeded these books out of the library because they contained incorrect information. I didn’t want my students to take these books, read them and think the information inside was factual! I conveyed my concerns to my principal, but she wanted the students to have the books. So, I HAD to give them away to my students. I felt awful and torn. As a librarian I am supposed to provide knowledge; correct knowledge; and I was leading my students to false information. As a teacher, I need to follow what my principal says. What to do! I came up with the following solution: to satisfy my principal and also keep my conscience clear, I told the kids that these books contained incorrect information and challenged them to each take a book and then identify the incorrect information by finding sources that provided the correct information. My students really enjoyed this! They gained experience with encyclopedias, the web and other reference sources. It was an excellent teaching tool!

So, if you are a school librarian and you have weeded books and your principal can’t stand to get rid of them in any way and insists the books be given to the students, here is a way that you can at least put them to good use. If anyone has any other suggestions, I’d love to hear them!

Information is constantly changing:
Changing form
Changing content
Changing accessibility

This YouTube video does a great job of showing you how Information is changing around you.

What does it make you think about?

The St. Joseph County Public Library made a YouTube video that you should take a moment to check out.  It shows libraries in a new “light”.

Just thought I’d share a picture of my fellow LIS753 students (see me in the Chicago Bears sweatshirt?).

In my LIS 753 class at Dominican University we were fortunate to have three Dutch “librarians” visit; Erik, Geert and Jaap. They are visiting from Delft, which is a city in the province of South Holland, in the Netherlands (“Delft” Wikipedia, 2007).

They do not call themselves a library; they are known as DOK. In Dutch DOK stands for Discotake (Music), Openbare (Public), Kunst (Art). Their “library” is very heavily technology oriented; they have 24″ Mac computers throughout their library, round/pod shaped music charis that have speakers inside the chair, flat screen televisions that all have a Wii connected to each one and Playstation 3′s.

DOK’s mission is to become the world´s most modern “library” in the world. They are gathering information about gaming in libraries, what libraries in the United States are doing and what people think about the future of libraries by touring across the United States in a camper they rented; calling themselves the LBI: the “Library Bureau of Investigation”. They started at the New York Public Library and will end up in Monterey, CA for the 2007 Internet Librarian Conference. Check out the website/blog for their tour, called the Shanachietour (the story tour).

They also interviewed my classmates, my professor (Michael Stephens) and myself about what we think the library of the future will look like (see picture below). I answered that in the future school libraries should be able to use Web 2.0 Technology and Tools to enhance teaching and learning. Look for the video they made with us in it; it is posted on their Schanachitour blog and titled  LBI Shanachie Tour 2007 Episode 7.1.

Photo from mstephens7 Flickr page

Check out other photos from the mstephens7 Flickr page of the Dutch visit to Dominican!

Don’t forget to check out the DOK website and blog!

Thanks so much for visiting Erik, Japp and Jeert!!

I found an article from USA Today where author J. K. Rowling revealed that she “…always saw Dumbledore as gay”.  An interesting article that might raise questions and discussions from Harry Potter fans, students, library patrons and librarians. 

Check out the full article here.