the cardigan librarian: Archive

Award Winners, Adults versus Children

In my head, it seems as though the books chosen by children can be captured and deeply appreciated in an independent read. The adult award winners sometimes require a little help, some students may like these books on their own, but these books are great for literature studies in class. A teacher can help bring out the allusions, literary elements, and depth to help the students gain true appreciation.
I have loved books from both lists, and I think all of the books are of high quality. I think children vote for the books that they read on their own and loved. Adults vote on the books that are the best literature (if that can be quantified).

Worth reading the whole post. far-to-fall offers a balanced perspective, not the usual knee-jerk rejection of literary children literature that’s been so prevalent in the wake of the Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! dramz.

Mar 30, 201210 notes

#children's lit #young adult #YA #newbery #lit

pinkbookdragon:

“You ever think: wow those librarians are always tweeting about the same thing!

Well, now you can play a game: It’s called Librarian Twitter Bingo. Every time you see a librarian’s tweet about one of the topics below, cross it off. When you get a whole row, yell “BINGO!”

See how many I hit upon @katherinebowers.

Mar 29, 20129 notes

#librarians #librarian twitter bingo #silly

re: dressing up for interviews and to meet potential employers.

I struggle with striking a balance between not being unbelievably uncomfortable in my deviation from my standard jeans-and-tee uniform and not underdressing. Moving to a different part of the country originally compounded my struggles, since it’s generally more casual than where I grew up in the South — when we first moved here, I was interviewed by a guy in shorts while I sweat away in a business suit.

Mar 27, 20122 notes

#libraries #hack library school #professionalism #jobz

husca:

“The seeds you borrow from the Seed Library of Pima County Public Library are lent to you at no financial cost, and they are priceless.

A commitment to growing plants from seeds is a gift to yourself. And the seeds you save and return are a gift to your community. We hope you learn much,…

A pretty interesting service model.

Mar 27, 20122 notes

#libraries #green #seed libraries #community agriculture #sustainability

heyboobooks:

The New York Times ran a cool piece yesterday about the power of young adult literature fans and social activism. Check it out!

From the article: “It’s essential that fans see their own power, or as Slack puts it, ‘We all yearn to be told we are magical.’”

I’ll be interested to learn how the Hunger Games activism campaign plays out. It seems like an incredible idea, and I like the way this article situates the new campaign as the legacy of Harry Potter fan activism I didn’t know about.

Mar 22, 201224 notes

#activism #ya activism #ya #hunger games #harry potter #oxfam

Mar 21, 201225 notes

#libraries #librarians #glasses girls #protests #toronto

thepinakes:

Follow these simple steps:

Write something positive about libraries.

Get it published before ALA Midwinter 2013 in a non-LIS print publication (newspaper, magazine, etc.). A letter to the editor could be enough.

Win $500 from the Great Librarian Write-Out.

You don’t need to be a librarian to win — you just need to have something (good) to say about libraries. Go to P.C. Sweeney’s blog for more details.

Mar 20, 201237 notes

#libraries #promotion #contests #p.c. sweeney

“The man that I named the Giver passed along to the boy knowledge, history, memories, color, pain, laughter, love, and truth. Every time you place a book in the hands of a child, you do the same thing. It is very risky. But each time a child opens a book, he pushes open the gate that separates him from Elsewhere. It gives him choices. It gives him freedom. Those are magnificent, wonderfully unsafe things.” —Lois Lowry, author of The Giver, Number the Stars and many others. It is her 75th birthday today. (via yourathenaeum)

Mar 20, 201295 notes

#lois lowry #the giver #mg fiction #children's lit #reading

The Disenchantments, Nina LaCour

The Disenchantments, Nina LaCour (2012)

Scenario: Colby and his best friend Bev have seen each other through everything, and now, high school graduation behind them, they’re about to set out on their biggest adventure: a brief tour for Bev’s band, followed by a year spent exploring Europe. It’s only on the road that Bev comes clean with her best friend — she’s not going to Europe.

Pros:

LovedHold Still,which I read for Ye Olde YA Class a couple years ago, so I was pumped when this came in.
Enjoyed Colby’s voice. It was refreshing to have a male protagonist voicing what is clearly a book written for girls.
The atmosphere. Summertime in northern California sounds pretty good when read in soggy New England March. Sunshiney but not-quite-too chipper, as the bandmates are all dealing with that tough in-between time.
The well-formed background characters. Very Dessenesque.
Melinda the VW van.

Cons:

Sometimes I got mad at Colby for caring for Bev, who could be so mercurial and unlikable, but I suppose that was kind of the point.

Bottom Line: Loved it. I’ve been a bit under the weather lately, and this one was pure, delicious escape. PS — I want Nina LaCour’s hair, please.

Mar 19, 20121 note

#nina lacour #hold still #the disenchantments #YA #reviews

Does anyone have any good substitutes for “interlibrary loan” that aren’t totally condescending? That’s one I have trouble explaining succinctly, though I am pretty good at remembering not to abbreviate.

Mar 17, 20126 notes

#libraries #interlibrary loan #lingo #jargon

chrischelberg:

Libraries really do care about privacy in a world where very very few institutions care.

(via @LISnews)

From the piece:

If you work in a library, that comes as no surprise to you. You probably deal every day, especially at a public library, with people who want to pick up holds for their wives or husbands, people who want a list of every book their teenager has checked out, people who wonder why you can’t just give them a list of all the mysteries in a particular series that they’ve already read. At the same time, of course, you also probably deal with people applying for library cards who don’t want to part with their basic demographic information or their email address, because they don’t want you emailing them stuff all the time.

Good pitch to remember, despite frequently encountering some of the scenarios she describes.

Mar 16, 20122 notes

#libraries #patrons #patron privacy #patriot act

Nancy Little the Academic Reference Librarian

Nancy strikes a librarianly pose.

1.Can you tell us about your current position?
I am currently working at Springfield Technical Community College in Springfield, MA as the part-time evening Reference Librarian. I have a number of responsibilities at the STCC library.

Read More →

Mar 16, 20122 notes

#five question fridays #interviews #libraries #academic libraries #library school #advice

Mar 16, 2012294 notes

#libraries #presentations #effective use of powerpoint

When there’s no smirking library assistant gatekeeper to witness your choices. (I once had an older patron explain to me, “I like romances set in England in the 1300s.” This is a very specific preference, and one difficult to search the catalog for, ma’am.)

That said, this might be a direction we can develop our e-book collections, especially if we find that circ is already up on the digital versions of these materials.

h/t: http://lisnews.org/

Mar 15, 20126 notes

#books #libraries #romance novels

Can you say more about working in a library in Uganda? I'm interested in international library work, and that sounds fascinating.

I can certainly say more, but it’s diffucult not to say too much(!).

It was hard and it was good and it was weird and I don’t know if I helped at all. I wished at the time I knew much more about librarianship, but I was right in realizing then that if I didn’t do it right after college, I mightn’t have the freedom later.

I know there are more formal programs for international librarianship, but what I did was this: I graduated college and got married, and my husband and I knew some people in Uganda, and we asked if we’d be of any help with our skills, and they said yes, so we went. And we spent six months there. My most official work was working on an interlibrary loan catalog for several area libraries without electricity or Internet and holding a workshop for those librarians, but I also learned how to cook and read to the children who crowded around our windows and very, very slowly downloaded episodes of The Office off iTunes.

Some of my general, not necessarily librarian-y reflections can be read here, but they’re pretty scattered.

What would you like to do, in terms of library work abroad, in a perfect world?

Mar 15, 20122 notes

bookriot:

Which fictional characters would you date?

GILBERT BLYTHE, OF COURSE AND FOREVER.

Honorable mention to Peeta Mellark (mostly for the bread).

Mar 14, 20125 notes

#books #gilbert blythe #peeta mellark #book crushes

How do you become a librarian, and how much do you get paid?

It depends. I became a librarian by reading voraciously as a kid, picking up a summer job in college at the local public library, and eventually falling into library work while living in Uganda. I think many people would agree that to get a good, full-time job now requires a master’s of library science, but there are plenty of people who have been in the field for years with only a bachelor’s and lots of experience.

The Occupational Outlook Handbook (a good resource for learning about lots of careers) says that in 2008, the median wages for a librarian were about $52,000. Elsewhere, I found “ALA-APA recommends a minimum of $42,181 for librarians and $13.52/hour for support staff, based on resolutions passed in 2007 and 2008” [source]. I think it’s often lower in the public library sector (like me), and higher in academic, law, and corporate settings.

I don’t get paid very much, since I’m only a part-time library assistant, but it’s more than I was paid as a receptionist. As an English major, I’m grateful to at least be doing something I enjoy, and it’s a means towards getting a better full-time placement when I finish my MLS.

Anyone else in the library community care to weigh in?

Mar 14, 20125 notes

Mar 14, 20129 notes

#libraries #academic libraries #five question fridays #college libraries #community college #research

Mar 14, 201238 notes

#paul rudd #hey girl #libraries

yourathenaeum:

Some of the info in our Staff Picks was gleaned from ReadIt1st, a project to encourage movie-goers to read the works on which films are based. Their newsletter features reviews of books currently or soon-to-be in theaters. ReadIt1st is currently looking for writers. There are plenty of books-to-movies coming out this year to choose from - The Lorax, The Great Gatsby, Life of Pi, and Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, to name a few. Why not flex your wit and submit?

And, if you’re feeling kind toward your librarian, please do not wait until a fortnight before a certain much-anticipated film debuts before you come in asking for “that book they’re making a movie of. It’s a trilogy?” This will always be Hunger Games, no matter how strangely you describe it, and we will always have quite a few holds ahead of you.

Mar 13, 20123 notes

#readit1st #movie adaptations #books #libraries

Mar 12, 20124 notes

#bookish #babies #baby shower #bookriot

Mar 12, 201215 notes

#libraries #bookstores #library bookstores #shopping cart guy

librarianpirate:

And for those of you who’ve only seen the movie? The book is better. And considering how much I love love love that movie, this is high praise indeed. But the book is better.

Passing on an important announcement.

Mar 9, 201276 notes

#the princess bride #ebooks

Camille Tyndall the aspiring archivist

Camille gets down to library business.

1.Can you tell us about your current position?

I actually work in three separate positions in the field right now as a graduate student, so it changes. I work as a graduate assistant at the reference desk of Davis Library, which is the main research library at UNC, as a graduate assistant for the Southern Folklife Collection, the audio-visual archival collection at UNC, and as a processing intern for the Forest History Society, a small library and archive in town.

the cardigan librarian

March 2012

35 posts