SCHNEIDER FAMILY BOOK AWARDS Jen Bryant and Boris Kulikov Six Dots, written by Bryant and illustrated by Kulikov, won the award for young readers. Louis Braille, who became blind by age 5, didn’t allow his disability to prevent him from learning about the world around him. Unsatisfied with the options available, Braille tinkered with French … Continue reading 2017 ALA Award Winners
Concepts such as “cheap,” “grassroots,” and “local” are relative and open to interpretation. It costs almost nothing to scatter wildflower seeds into abandoned lots while walking or biking around your neighborhood. But it might cost upward of $5,000 to install a “parkmobile” consisting of a custom dumpster filled with tree ferns and yucca plants. You … Continue reading Tactical Urbanism
A Cuban-American, Engle is the first person of Latino descent to receive the honor. She was also the first Latina to be awarded a Newbery Honor in 2009 for The Surrender Tree: Poems of Cuba’s Struggle for Freedom. What poets have had an influence on your writing? This is such a challenging question, because I … Continue reading Newsmaker: Margarita Engle
What plans do you have for retirement? My game plan is to get a studio and do some painting. I have put this aside for many years—maybe since grad school. Lately I’ve been doing a little bit of work in en plein air oils. I like to have an easel in the back of my car and … Continue reading An Interview with Retiring ALA Executive Director Fiels
Davis is branch manager at San Diego Public Library. An excerpt from his book was published in the July/August issue of American Libraries. What made you want to write this book? When I first saw what Contra Costa County (Calif.) Library was doing with its Discover and Go ticketed pass program, it seemed like such a big … Continue reading A Conversation with Author Jeffrey T. Davis
Teens and tots At the Opening General Session, Girls Who Code founder Reshma Saujani kicked things off with a few startling statistics: Last year, the United States graduated 40,000 computer science majors for 500,000 open jobs. Only one in four American high schools offer computer science as part of the curriculum. And today, only 18% … Continue reading 2017 Annual Conference Wrap-Up
I probably spend more time in the exhibit hall than most conference attendees—you may have seen me browsing the aisles or rushing to my next appointment. The meetings I have with company executives and product experts inform much of my research and writing for months to come as a chronicler of the library technology industry. … Continue reading Tech Power
For kids, a library card is often their first entry to membership in grown-up society as individuals who are independent of their families. Library cards represent belonging for adults as well. For new immigrants, a library card may be the first material sign of membership in their wider new community. Whether one is a first- … Continue reading Sharing Our Cities, Towns, and Natural Places
Girls Who Code has seen exponential growth since its founding. To what do you attribute to the nonprofit’s success? We have this amazing, authentically girl-led movement. We started with 20 girls in 2012; now we’ve reached more than 40,000 girls in all 50 states through our summer immersion programs and after-school clubs. We’ve met girls … Continue reading Newsmaker: Reshma Saujani
“As this nation’s opioid crisis has exploded, the staff at the public library … have become first responders,” NPR’s Scott Simon told listeners. “And I gather the librarians there have been obliged to become involved in a way that—well, become involved in a way librarians aren’t usually asked to become involved.” What Simon didn’t say—but … Continue reading Saving Lives in the Stacks
Underserved communities need libraries now more than ever, and among the most vulnerable communities are youth who identify as LGBTQ+. Unfortunately, library services to this group are, at the moment, “woefully inadequate,” despite the social and legal progress the community has made over the past several years. Yet libraries must take on and live up … Continue reading Standing Up for Our Communities
What made you want to write this book? Through my teaching and consulting work, I meet library staffers from all around the country, and quite frequently I end up talking to them about their careers. What I hear quite often is that, while they love working at libraries, they feel there’s something missing—something they really … Continue reading A Conversation with Author Catherine Hakala-Ausperk
