I was teaching Thursday morning, so I wasn't able to attend the Wednesday pre-conference or early Thursday general sessions, but I did manage to slip one session in on Thursday afternoon, before the breakout meetings and evening banquet. I've been working closely with children's literature class over the past couple of years, so I thought the information shared in the Graphic Novels for Youth and Teens session, led by Andrew Frisbee (North Liberty Community Library), Sarah Latcham (Iowa City Public Schools), and Becky Johnson (Cedar Rapids Community Schools), would be helpful and give me ideas about collection development & instruction for this area. Boy, did it ever! I came away with a fantastic list I hope to purchase, plus I got to visit with a former coworker, Andrew! Below is a list of just a few of the titles that were mentioned. Graphic novels can sometimes be tricky. There is a wide range of of topics covered, and sometimes it can be tricky to determine age-appropriateness. Particularly if you plan on recommending something to a young person, be sure you have carefully assessed this. Just because it is presented in a visual format doesn't mean it should be fair game for some of the youngest readers. This is also something parents don't always realize. While this won't necessarily be a problem when purchasing for my college population, it is important for me to be aware of when presenting this type of material to our education students.
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You may find more resources here: www.tinyurl.com/ia-graphic
On Thursday afternoon I attended the ILA/ACRL meeting where we took care of normal business (approval of minutes, individual & committee reports) and began to think ahead about elections for next year's officers (who have since been elected--My coworker, Dan, is the new ILA/ACRL President!).
After the ILA/ACRL meeting, a small group of instruction librarians got together to discuss Becky Canovan's idea for a group space where instruction librarians can come together to share ideas, resources, encouragement, etc. The idea behind this group came from the ILA/ACRL conference held last May in Decorah, IA. Those who attended the instruction/IL lightning round session noticed that there were many timely, relevant questions being asked by both new and veteran librarians who may be the sole instruction librarian at their institutions. Many great instruction ideas were shared as well. This planted a seed in Becky Canovan’s brain and, after a few discussions and emails, the IL Interest Group began to take root. At ILA we discussed goals for the group, how/where we wanted to collaborate (online space), and what we wanted to be included (general post from one of the website moderators or guest contributors, a space where questions can be contributed and then later addressed in a post or responded to by other users, encouraging or humorous stress reliever posts to help everyone stay afloat and take a moment to remember to be a person too, and perhaps a space where users can contribute "this worked" or "this flopped" examples). This is still very much in the early stages, but I'm looking forward to seeing how it all comes out! This April we hope to coordinate a pre-conference session before IPAL to help connect instruction librarians around the state.
That evening Bob Anderson, Director of the Raptor Research Project in Decorah, IA, spoke during the banquet about the many projects he has worked on over the years, capturing many different species of wildlife (specifically birds) on film. Thanks to advances in technology, online streaming of the Decorah Eagles has really taken off, but Anderson also shared stories of humor, wisdom, and science.
In my next post I will cover Friday's events.
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