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Conclusions: ILF Annual Conference 2014 (ToolKit B for 671)

In my pre-conference blog, I mentioned that I was a little nervous about attending my first professional conference before I had even finished my degree.  I was still nervous when I first arrived.  I felt a bit better when I ran into some MSD Washington Township librarians that I knew, including my own boss, and by the time the Keynote address was underway, I was feeling right at home.

During the conference I felt excited.  There was so much to see and learn from the presenters who clearly worked hard to share their love of librarianship. I learned about privacy, access to information, censorship, new books, free research resources, and through all of these lessons, I learned about advocacy.  All of the librarians are clearly champions of the profession and spend their own free time preparing and sharing their knowledge.  I would like to carry this new information and fresh excitement to my job. Also, I hope I'm brave enough to make some changes to my mindset in terms of the tiny bits of censorship I have been letting seep into my daily practice.

After the conference, I felt renewed in the library spirit.  This is truly a librarian's evangelist revival.  I plan to attend at least one day next year and maybe, in a few years, I will have something to contribute.

For more information about the Indiana Library Federation and the ILF Annual Conference, visit http://www.ilfonline.org/

A Fantastic Finish to a Fantastic Day: The YHBA Banquet with 2013 Winner Chris Barton (ToolKit B for 671)

Author Chris Barton and Me on November 18, 2014 at the ILF Annual Conference

After a wonderful day of learning and connecting with librarians from all over Indiana, I attended the YHBA banquet to wrap up the day with a fun and fancy bow.

First off, the dinner was tasty and I got to talk shop during the meal with some school librarians who have many years of experience in the field.  What I learned is that my situation, while not ideal because it lacks a flexible schedule, isn't nearly as challenging as the situation of some of my colleagues.  Like some of our guest bloggers, these librarians worked in smaller districts where they are required to preside over all the libraries in the district.  We commiserated about budgets, schedules, and collaboration or the lack thereof while we ate.  After dinner, Chris Barton, who won the YHBA  award for picture books in 2013 for Shark vs. Train, let us into his brain with a presentation about the award winning book.

Chris told us how he got the idea for Shark vs. Train while out for a run.  He explained that he runs without headphones on or music playing because it's in those solitary moments that he gets many of his book ideas.  His advice for writers included always carrying a notebook and also joining the Society of Children's Book Authors and Illustrators in order to network, bounce ideas, and get feedback on ones writing.

Also, Chris shared some of his ideas for Shark vs. Train (including illustrations projected on a movie screen) that didn't make it into the book.  Interestingly, he worked very closely with Tom Lichtenheld, the illustrator, during the creation of this book which is atypical of the publishing process.  Normally, he noted, authors and illustrators hardly meet or talk,  Authors send the manuscript and the illustrator decides what to discuss.  This is not how he and Tom worked and he is the first to admit that the book is better due to their close collaboration.

Of course, I couldn't leave without an autograph, and Kids Ink had copies of his books available for purchase after the meal, including his brand new book Attack! boss! cheat code! : a gamer's alphabet
I was one of the final stragglers in the autograph line and Chris was still gracious and funny.

When I got home that night I noticed that he had responded to the tweet I made during his speech.
What a guy!

Breakout Session 4-- INSPIRE Me! with Julie Elmore, Joe Fox, Sherry Gick, & Vincci Kwong (ToolKit B for 671)

I'm going to quote the ILF Program because it describes this session best:

INSPIRE Me!
In 2013, the Pass-It-On team from the Indiana Librarian
Leadership Academy took the initiative to create a project
which aims to raise awareness and usage of freely available
public databases through INSPIRE. This session will provide
an overview of the project, findings of INSPIRE’s usage,
and resources available for you to get yourself familiar with
INSPIRE. This session is for all type of libraries, so be ready
to INSPIRE!


I have used INSPIRE before to help students with research, but I didn't realize that it had so many useful resources outside of journal articles for academic research.  It also includes free access to magazines online, the MEDLINE database, newspapers and even free test prep guides.  The team put this presentation together after collecting data on current INSPIRE usage.  They presented their findings (which they have also shared with the INSPIRE administrators), presented their awareness raising website that breaks down what is offered in easy to navigate tabs, and answered our questions about how to teach our own patrons to use this collection of awesome free resources.

Check Out http://inspirepassiton.weebly.com/
and
http://zu8fr6nk5e.cs.serialssolutions.com/

Breakout Session 3--Thousands of New Pages: A Pick of the 2014 Books K-8 with Shirley Mullin (ToolKit B for 671)

These are the books that Shirley discussed in her session.  There is a nice mix of novels and picture books on the list and she summarized, shared and read aloud from all of them.  The one that really grabbed me from her entertaining presentation was Skila Brown's Caminar about a Guatemalan boy living in the midst of the late 20th century civil war in his country.  I went to the Kids Ink booth in the Exhibit Hall right after the breakout session and picked it up.  I had a break in my schedule so I found a place to sit down and read and was instantly lost in a Guatemalan village. It's written in verse, and I'm a sucker for a book written in verse.  By the time I went to bed that night, I had finished it. 

Breakout Session 2--How Censorship Hurts Kids with Mike Mullin (ToolKit B for 671)

Mike Mullin, author of Ashfall, is a passionate warrior against censorship.  His breakout session started with roll playing exercise where we acted as a librarian or patron with a special background.  The patrons and librarians interacted based on their assigned persona in an attempt to get library materials.  I was a teenager who had lost a brother to suicide, but I couldn't discuss it outright and I had to find books that I would like and that may help me process that loss.  Some patrons were "concerned citizens" trying to actively or surreptitiously get books removed from the collection.  It was a bit awkward in the beginning, play acting with total strangers, but after a couple of minutes, we really started to get into our rolls.  In the end, we were asked to record how many books we chose or loaned out, based on our rolls.

Then, Mike and his mother Shirley (owner of Kids Ink Bookstore in Indianapolis) gave us a rundown of some popular titles that are considered controversial and discussed why we should have them in our library. Mike asked us about our experiences in the role-playing exercise and related them to the titles he discussed, including a picture book about a transgendered child called, I Am Jazz.   Shirley related the story of one of her employees questioning the importance of stocking a book on such a controversial subject when another employee  interjected that she was sending the information on this book to a friend from church who had a transgendered child.

Mike finished up with what he calls the "Interpretive Dance" where he discussed some sobering statistics about what children in the United States that are faced with.  He asked 20 of us to stand up front with a colored card.  He would call out a color and those of us with that color would step forward and he would read a statistic.  For example, "2 (among 12-17 year-olds) are active, current users of illegal drugs," or, "2 girls and 1 boy will be sexually molested before they turn 18."  The statistics addressed everything from food instabillity to suicide.  As we stepped out and stepped back, our dance was a physical representation of what our kids are facing.  What we learned was that the books we may be reluctant to provide for our patrons may be exactly what they need to read to feel less alone, or stronger in the face of adversity.  As a matter of fact, according to Mike's research, "7 (among 15-year-olds) don’t think they can talk to their parents."  

Here is how he concluded the Interpretive Dance:

"According to UNICEF, the U.S. is the second worst country to grow up in in the industrialized world. The only worse country is Great Britain.

These problems cut across all social, economic, and geographic lines. I’ve just described kids who use your library. Kids you know." 

The statistics Mike used come from Unicef for the most part.  He was kind enough to send me the link when I emailed him a couple days after the conference.  This session really hit home with me and I've been thinking about it ever since.  In the past, I was worried about providing materials to children that they weren't ready for it.  Now, I'm wondering if not providing them with access to "controversial" material may do more harm than good.  I've never been a censor per se, but I do worry that maybe I haven't been as open to what my patrons need because I'm afraid of some sort of backlash.  This session was seriously thought-provoking.  

Breakout Session I--Page Turners Aplenty: Your New YHBA Nominees with Valarie Bassett & Vicki Bulita (ToolKit B for 671)

My first breakout session was conducted by the hard working and long reading ILF YHBA committee. The Young Hoosier Book Award turned 40 this year.  In addition to introducing the 2015-2016 nominees, the presenters also read aloud from YHBA winners of years past and gave prizes to people for guessing the title of the books based on short snippets of text.  The atmosphere was festive with "40" decorations everywhere and people jumping up and oohing, ahhing and ummming as we all had our memories jogged with 4 decades of award winning juvenile fiction.

Here is a link to the list of nominees for 2015-2016:

https://c.ymcdn.com/sites/ilfonline.site-ym.com/resource/resmgr/YHBA/2015-16_YHBA_Nominees.pdf


This was a great first ILF session for me to attend because my school participates in the YHBA program each year.  It was great to learn more about how the nominees are chosen and what the committee does.  Once the 20 nominees are chosen for each age group, the committee writes lesson plans for each title that they provide for teachers and librarians to use for free.  This is after they have read many many books in an effort to choose the best of the best in children's literature.  One day, when I'm finished with grad school, I would love to serve on this committee.  The current committee gave us fair warning, though, that it requires a substantial time commitment.  In the mean time, I will enjoy sharing the fruits of their labor with my students.

AN ILF 2014 Poster Presentation: Latinos in Literature (ToolKit B for 671)

Click on the image to enlarge it.

In the ILF Exhibit Hall, there are poster presentations of topics in librarianship.  This one caught my eye.  I have a BA in Spanish and I work in a school with a Latino population of about 25%.  While our collection has some books by Latino authors like Pam Muñoz Ryan and Francisco Jiménez, for instance, as well as some popular English titles and non-fiction resources translated into Spanish, our collection needs some more Latino influence.  

I did some research on the strength of our Latino culture, fiction, and Spanish language collection:

The current collection consists of 97 items with an average age of 17 years old. The breakdown of formats is about 90% books to 10% movies. Within the books, about 60 percent of the resources are non-fiction, while the movies are 100% non-fiction. Its weaknesses lie in the age of the books about countries and cultures and the lack of sufficient novels with Latino characters. The biggest weakness is the number of resources in comparison to the size of the overall collection, which is about 18,000 books. With a 25% Latino population, there should be more resources that speak to their culture and heritage. However, our collection does contain a variety of Latino folktales and resources on individual countries that are current enough and in good condition.

NEXT UP:  Introducing the 2015-2016 YHBA Nominees

ILF 2014 The Exhibit Hall (ToolKit B for 671)

After the keynote speech, there was a block of time in the schedule called a "No Conflict" time to give everyone a chance to visit the Exhibit Hall.  The hall was full of vendors selling or advertising everything from books to architecture.  Book vendors were there, including Follett and Baker and Taylor, as well as our local and independent Kids Ink bookstore.  IUPUI was there, as well, with information about degrees in informatics and librarianship.

Almost every booth in the hall had candy to give away.  Clearly they know how to get our attention!  It really did feel like Halloween in there.  One design firm was even giving away full sized Nestle Crunch bars!  I put my treats in the goody bag I received when I picked up my name badge as I browsed the displays.  As I made my way down the aisles, I was particularly interested in a machine that re-glues a books pages to it's spine.  It was much cooler than my Elmer's glue and binder clip method of repair.  Alas, it was very expensive.  Maybe I need to write a Donor's Choose grant proposal?

The refreshing thing about this particular exhibition was the lack of sales pressure.  As many of us are government employees or working for a large business of some sort, we don't really go from booth to booth writing checks.  These vendors were providing us with information, for the most part, so we can decide if we have room in our budgets for book repair toys or for a big remodel.

I didn't ask a lot of questions this time because I don't really have the authority to make buying decisions in my position as a library assistant, but I did eavesdrop on many conversations between librarians and vendors.  I got a feel for how size and location (rural vs. urban) seems to affect the services or amenities a library offers.  I heard a librarian from a small rural school discussing the addition of Follett e-books to her collection which made me wonder how different her space and collection must be than mine, which services a large urban population.  We've had e-books in our collection for some time.  I also saw that the architecture firms had fewer people stop and I wondered if the interested parties were public library directors or maybe school district officials.

The hall was a good place to get a feel for the diversity in librarianship in our state.  Many ethnic backgrounds were represented at the conference ranging in age from young adult to senior citizens and in the hall they were intermingled in way that made me certain that knowledge increases empathy.  I read an article in the Guardian online with author Neil Gaiman the other day on the importance of libraries in a society and this quote really stuck with me, "...because a book is a little empathy machine. It puts you inside somebody else’s head. You see out of the world through somebody else’s eyes. It’s very hard to hate people of a certain kind when you've just read a book by one of those people."


References

Litt, T. (2014, November 17). Neil Gaiman: Libraries are cultural 'seed corn' Retrieved November 21, 2014, from http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/nov/17/neil-gaiman-libraries-are-cultural-        seed-corn?CMP=share_btn_tw