Tag: kla11

KLA 2011 Wrapup post

At the KLA 2011 conference this year, “Share the Vision”, I stayed sane, and only presented once. And I plan to act accordingly at KLA conference in years to come. Last year’s insane presentation schedule was fun to do (I ended up doing 4 separate sessions with panels of people, plus taught a pre-conference), but I didn’t get to enjoy the conference at all — I’d crash between presentations in my hotel room.

I won’t do that again. And I don’t recommend this at all (friends don’t let friends do crazy presentation slates — remember that!). Conferences are meant to be enjoyed and a time to visit with your colleagues and peers, and also attend sessions (yes, I advocate the priority of talking to people above attending conference sessions; conferences are a great way to meet new people and learn from one another)

This year I only gave a presentation with the fabulous Liz Rea, on online security tips, “Naked in the Library: Keeping Your Private Information Private, Online“.

Side note: Previously the funniest (and most useful) presentation had been the Cloud Computing presentation Sharon, Liz, and I presented together as a team at different times in 2009 (which reminds me, after TEDxOKC and hearing from a member of the Chrome OS team, I think we should resurrect the cloud computing presentation again; it’s even more relevant today). End Side Note

I didn’t think we could have more fun than using silly cat pictures to describe the wonder and perils of cloud computing and what it can mean for libraries. But Liz and I managed to do just that with “Naked in the Library“. People get bored or overwhelmed or confused or lose interest in security presentations or conversations; we’d both experienced this. So how to get people’s attention when security is more important than ever, especially as cloud computing is an exploding trend? With a combination of live simulated hacking, videos, and the Keep Calm and Channel Han mantra, we had our audience participating, laughing, engaged, and appearing to remember what we’d discussed over about 40 minutes. I have a feeling we’ll be doing this one again. [Presentation info: Slides, Handout, Resources]

I spent time at the conference helping produce and moderate two virtual track sessions — great fun to hear from Susan, Leah, and Gail in their sessions, and I just realized I have another set of notes to type now from their sessions to share (another day). I thought the sessions went well and we have fantastic archives of information that I hope people listen to post-conference. (For fun, here’s the Xtranormal video promoting the track and the Xtranormal video thanks).

Note: If you registered for the conference or the virtual track only, you have access to these sessions; see Cindi Hickey’s message reminder on KANLIB for more info. If you haven’t seen the message or are interested in getting the archives to the sessions, contact Cindi directly; her contact information is on the virtual track page.

I attended a few other sessions, including Heidi’s Silent LIbrary: Using MTV as library outreach programming, library advocacy in Kansas update (notes coming), one of Maribeth’s sessions on computer security (notes coming), In Pursuit of Library Elegance, and Placing a Hold on the Love of Reading.

All in all it was a great couple of days in Topeka. Royce, Mickey, and the other conference organizers did a great job bringing the conference together. I had a wonderful time connecting with good friends (had a bit of fun in downtown Lawrence and laughed way too much; thanks Kate, Heidi, and Rachel — SLIM will forever connect us 🙂 ), talked to many other library colleagues, and continued to find intersecting threads of thought that were still in the process of being pulled together. Some had been present for months, some came at CiL, some came at PLAVSS, and some came at KLA.

Then I left Topeka and drove to OKC for TEDxOKC on Friday. The drive down to OKC went by quickly thanks to phone conversations. Between a conversation with a college roommate and a marathon phone conversation with Buffy Hamilton (I think we talked 3 hours!), the 4.5 hour drive went by quickly. I stayed with Kirsten, talked library shop as always, and headed to bed. I knew Friday would be exciting thanks to knowing a lot about the TED and TEDx concepts, but I had no clue how exciting and life-changing it would be. The threads I’ve been seeing merged, exploded, and came to life. Stay tuned for those notes and reflections over the next few days.

Placing a Hold on the Love of Reading: A School and Public Library Partnership in Atchison, KS

Cathy Coronado, Atchison Middle School Media Specialist

Diana Weaver, Atchison Public Library Director (as of right now; she’ll be the new director at Basehor Community Library at the end of April!)

How it all began….

NEKLS Summer School Librarians Workshop in 2009, featuring Tasha Squires, author of Library Partnerships: Making Connections Between Schools and Public Libraries

The information at the workshop was great, but the best part was the driving to and from the session. Diana and Laura (new elementary librarian) and Cathy never had really talked before; Diana was the new director of the Atchison Public Library.

Building our Partnership:

  • Breakfast w area school librarians (4 schools (Lutheran, Catholic private schools, and public schools). wanted to meet again but never could
  • Personal visits over coffee
  • Participation in MS in-service on school discipline
  • Library is a block from the MS. Teen problem. No consistency in policies and discipline enforcement. Things in the library did change, but still didn’t change completely. Not just the library’s problem to solve. Library went to MS inservice on discipline. Brought back info to library staff with mixed results, but did start a conversation. Building read over a million words. Public library wanted to be a part of this.
  • Meet w the school district superintendent to support the reading system: school had a courier system. Diana asked if the courier system could stop at the public library.
  • Public library staff visit to all AMS reading classes to demonstrate how to place holds through the NExpress shared catalog system. If the kids didn’t have a library card and their parents wouldn’t give them a card, a building card was created so holds could still be placed.

The Book Whisperer: Awakening the Inner Read in Every Child, Donalyn Miller

“Part of wearing a reader’s clothes is learning how to navigate a library and feeling at home in one” (Miller 59).

Wanted to make the middle school kids feel at home in the library.

Students Tour Atchison Public Library: All 6th, 7th, and 8th grade reading classes toured

Students learned about:

  • the YA book collection, including graphic novels
  • available tech like laptops, audiobooks and video games
  • upcoming and ongoing teen events
  • how to get their own library card
  • what homework resources are available

The Process to send books to the Middle School Library

Atchison Library (already processes 80+ holds per day as part of NExpress):

  • AMS has its own card to place holds and checkout (with Cathy’s permission) — has checkout out 400+ books on the AMS card since October
  • Items are transferred between the school and public library through the school district courier.

The Process at AMS

  • Students can place holds on books at the APL Online Catalog Station
  • Students write the title of the book they want and their name on a slip of paper and deposit it in the box.

“Because so many students’ reading choices are dictated by their teachers, they never learn how to choose books for themselves. How can they shape a self-identity as a reader if they never get the chance to find out what they like?” (Miller 28)

This is all done through one card. Kids who have local cards, can place holds, but then have to pickup at the local library. Teachers are now starting to use the service as well — quick access to the public library.

AMS Process Continues

  • There are in and out boxes for the books
  • Each book is checked out to the student using a temporary number
  • I use the code APL at the beginning of the call numbers of all the books
  • I periodically check the holds and books checked out to see if they match my records

The Benefits of our relationship

  • Public libraries have more funding for materials and resources
  • School libraries have direct access to young readers

Public library Benefits

  • Kids reading our stuff
  • Cooperative collection development
  • Better behavior in the library (Cathy said the library staff were her friends on the visits)
  • Student volunteers
  • Library board members
  • Presence in community
  • Teachers also visiting us more

School library Benefits

  • Supplements our collection (no money for collection)
  • Reference books and books written primarily for adults are available
  • Provides a service to teachers who love to read
  • Teachers try out classroom sets of books
  • Keeps students interested in reading when they can have the book they choose

School wide competition in 2nd quarter. AR test system used as a quick test system. Word count. 100 million words goal w teachers. Teacher teams — 1 hr for lunch given to winning team.

Teachers taken out of the equation, and only kids the second time, made it to 99 million words

“Our national discussion of reading has been reduced to a talking point a measurement score. How can we get our students to open books and start reading when, in many classrooms, the focus is on test performance?” (Miller 180).

Now, drill and skill. Demoralize teachers.

Word counts of what students had read tracked by library (thanks to AR tests — just to be a check, not accuracy of test scores). Principal looked at the bottom of the words lists.Cathy plotted # of words where the person’s score was. Anyone under 100,000 words typically was not passing assessments. Lightbulb went off in principal’s head.

Practice comes from what the kids want to read. Not specific books.

We Both Agree: The most important thing is creating life long readers and future library users. Thank you!

http://book-whisperer.blogspot.com Blog

Comments/questions from audience:

A homework pass for every 2 hrs students read. 25 teens typically participate. 170+ teens participated after the homework pass project. (Can’t remember now which library — maybe Bonner Springs??)

If you can hook that one person, it builds that relationship and can get passed onto others.

What do you do if your town’s school librarian wants nothing to do with your public library? Can you go directly to the teachers? Yes.

People are going to be more receptive to the public library-school library partnership because budgets are in bad shape.

HS/MS brings the public library books in the summer, 300-500 books per year during the summer. Teen section is tiny at public library.

At the beginning, discussed who’s responsibility is it to pay for the books? Certain loss involved. Price of doing business.

Haven’t lost many books through the sharing. Cathy’s loss rate is better than the public library. She has a captive audience

Homebound patron category that doesn’t accrue fines used at the public library to check the books out to the middle school. That’s what the school uses.

The high school students participate but not at the same level. The teachers love the library.

The private schools in Atchison also use the public library (the teachers particularly mentioned from these schools).

The students are being trained at the middle school and will hopefully take their love of reading onto the high school level.

Building a culture of reading.

“Ask for forgiveness, not permission” philosophy. Brief discussion about ages and book challenges.

I was really glad I attended this session. Diana, why is this the first I’ve heard of your successes there?? 🙂 You and Cathy need to share this success widely. And I highly recommend the book mentioned at the beginning of this post by Tasha Squires. NExpress libraries, it’s in the NEKLS collection — request it through NExpress. Other Kansas libraries not on NExpress, request through the KLC. Outside Kansas, request through your local library!

Naked in the Library presentation (on online security)

Liz Rea and I are giving a presentation tomorrow (Wednesday) at the 2011 Kansas Library Association conference. We constantly run into Internet security issues and questions at NEKLS, whether it’s through malware, phishing, fake anti-virus, bad passwords, clickjacking, or some other security behavior.

Talking about these topics can be boring or too technical, so we decided to give a humorous and hopefully memorable presentation on it all, beginning with the title of “Naked in the Library: Keeping your private information private, online”. The resources for this presentation are linked below. I hope you find them humorous and useful.

I know Liz and I have enjoyed trying to find creative ways to teach convoluted tech terms to our audience in memorable and useful ways. This was more fun than building our 2009 Cloud Computing presentation, and that one was quite memorable!

Our slides are available online at SlideShare.

The handout we’ll be going over during the presentation is available as a PDF.

The further resources page is available on the NEKLS website.