Redhaired Librarian

ALA2006: Teaching Cataloging to School Librarians

Finally, my first ALA write-up!  This session was a lot more frustrating to describe than I expected it to be.

Session: Teaching Cataloging to School Library Media Specialists
Education of Library Media Specialists Section
25 June 2006
Room 243, Morial Convention Center, New Orleans

Continue reading ALA2006: Teaching Cataloging to School Librarians…

Write-Up Coming Soon

I’m heading out camping with the family tonight, but if we get home early enough tomorrow, I hope to finish my write-up of the ALA session “Teaching Cataloging to School Library Media Specialists.”

Busy Month

June is going to be an amazing month!  This weekend, comprehensive exams for my master’s start.  Tomorrow is the first session for the research integrity class I’m taking.  Summer sessions always seem a little harder than regular semesters.  Next Thursday, I’m going to the ALA conference, where I will be the student to staff representative for my school.

I’m also gearing up for a shift in my education.  This fall, I’m taking introduction to educational statistics, human information behavior, and reading communities.  I’m excited, but a lot of things in my life are going to change in the next few months.  I hope that with those changes, I will be able to carve out a few minutes a day to reflect here about what’s going on in library education, especially the education of school librarians.

Auction

Our graduate student group is holding an auction fundraiser to raise money to send students to various library conferences. There are some very cool items up for bidding. Some of the items can be mailed to you, while others are specific to central Missouri.

Check it out!

Conference: Bite Me! Vampires in Current Fiction

This is the first session I attended at the conference. It was led by Kansas City, KS librarian Kaite Mediatore Stover. She started with a brief overview of the horror genre, and then moved onto vampire books specifically. She covered the history of vampire legends and the history of vampires as characters in books. The word vampire first appeared in the English language in 1732, according to Ms. Stover.

She discussed current sub-genres of the vampire subgenre, including historicals, westerns, romances, mysteries, and young adult. Some of the titles I’m interested in reading include the Fat White Vampire series by Andrew Fox and the Mary Janice Davidson Undead romantic comedy series. An audience member said that the vampire story The Historian is popular among teens at her library.

For readers’ advisory, Ms. Stover suggests both volumes of Hooked on Horror.

I have to admit, I don’t think I have ever read a vampire book. I’m not sure why I completely skipped over that sub-genre, since I really enjoyed at least three vampire movies when I was a teen: The Lost Boys, Once Bitten, and Love at First Bite.

Conference: First Time Attendees’ Orientation

The first thing we did at the conference after checking in was to visit the first time attendees’ orientation.

The leaders of the different divisions and special interest groups got up and spoke to about 15 or 20 of us about what presentations they were sponsoring. They also encouraged us to join MLA. A fun thing they had us do was “new member bingo.” We were to find five different people to interview and write down their answers. One had to be a new member (identified by a blue star on their name tag), one had to be a first-time attendee (identified by a gold star), one had to be a special interest group member (identified by a ribbon), one had to be a division member (identified by a ribbon), and one had to be a vendor (identified by being in the exhibition hall with stuff to sell. Heh.) My classmates and I started trying to interview each other, but ended up reaching out and interviewing others. I talked to two people I didn’t know from the campus library, one graduate of the program, and a woman with the Missouri Association of School Librarians. The forms were then entered for a drawing, to win a Dell PDA. My roommate won!

This might seem frivolous, but it was important because people had a tendency to stick tight with the group they came with. Although my group stuck together pretty tightly (and found a classmate who moved away this summer!), it was great that we reached out and made contact with other people we might have been too introverted to approach otherwise.

One of my classmates told us that when she went to ALA, they had a new attendees’ orientation with tips on how to get the most from a conference. I would like to see that added to the new attendees’ orientation. Next year, the conference will be here in central Missouri, so I think we might have a chance to help.

I’ll post more about the conference as I have time. I’ll discuss the sessions I mentioned here, in order. (Unless someone posts a comment because they want to read about a specific session.)

Conference!

The conference was great! At the last minute, we were all able to get rooms at the hotel (oddly, thanks to getting kicked out of a different hotel.) The sessions I attended were:

• Wednesday
• New Attendees Orientation
• Bite Me! Vampires in Current Fiction
• Do You Have any Good Children’s Books?
• Performers Showcase & Dessert Reception at the KCPL
• Thursday
• YASIG Breakfast Featuring YA author Alex Finn
• Bringing YA Literature out of the Closet
• Networking Luncheon at Kabuki in the Crown Center Plaza
• My session
• SISLT alumni wine and cheese reception
• Friday
• Poster Session

I’ll try to post notes about each session as I have time to type them up. I’ll trackback them to this post to link everything together.

It was great and I think my presentation went well.