A Short Library Sermon

Yesterday we had a handout to help us take notes at church. Unfortunately for my spiritual life, my mind wandered a bit ( sorry, God). It wandered right over to libraries. My pastor's key points were entitled, Six Phases in the Growth of the New Testament Church. It was very interesting and he had scripture verses to illustrate all six, as any good preacher would. Here are the six phases he mentioned: Praising, Pure, Prepared, Powerful, Persecuted and Practical. I do not want to seem unspiritual at all, but do you not see as I did, how these points match our library programs??? Audrey Church was the first person to expose me to the concept of advocacy. She was the president or vice, can't remember, which in VEMA. As an organization I feel we made great strides because of her. These 6 P's from my church sermon fall under the heading of advocacy.
First P, you need to yell out to everyone how great your library is. Praise.
Second P, you need to keep your library pure. Your library, should be a very ethical and legal arena so everyone can count on you to spread the word about intellectual freedom and other key issues related to libraries.
Third P, your library should be organized. You should be following accepted cataloging rules and shelving conventions. Do not be so creative you patrons cannot find books in your library or worse they cannot find a book in the public libary.
Fourth P, you and your library should be powerful in so many ways. Remember the poster, " Your librarian the Original Search Engine"? You should be a powerhouse researcher and helper. You should also have developed a base of leadership in your school!! More on that in another blog post.
Fifth P is persecuted. This P is much more difficult to take from the New Testament church. I see it as there will be some folks on staff who do not want to embrace change so they will might say inappropriate things about your program. Don't worry, others will love what you are doing with the program.
Sixth P is pratical. Please by all means make sure your library program remains practical for all your patrons!
Debbie, you and I might be doing this as a presentation for VEMA in the fall!!
Happy Monday you all, I have to get ready for work.

Oh To Travel

Yesterday I mentioned the convention this weekend. Seriously, I could go to a conference/convention every season. There are so many things I am interested in and of course, I know there is a conference to match each one. They all have their own personalities even with the tweaks from year to year. VEMA is my top favorite but the National Geneology Conference I attended with my friend, Kathy, was amazing. It was filled with awesome speakers, tons of books and so many really friendly people. I even went to a postcard collecting session!. Awesome! And next month I will track down the speaker and look through the thousands of postcards in his shop in Florida! Having said all that, I have conferences on my mind because VEMA and AASL are in the same month this year. What a huge bummer! Now normally, this would not be so bad for me due to the distance involved in traveling to AASL. However, this year AASL, is in Charlotte, an easy drive. You can read more about it if you do a simple search for AASL conference 2009. There is a PDF file there with preliminar info all tied in to the racecar theme. If you find the file, be sure to scroll way down to the items covered under your registration fee. You can stay super busy without doing all the paid items. You will also see James Patterson is going to be there. He has a website for teachers and librarians called Read Kiddo Read, http://www.readkiddoread.com/home It looks like fun. In addition to awesome speakers and sessions, they always do special things. This year the One Book One Conference title is Born Digital. I have not read the book, but I will be searching for it on Amazon today. It is about our digital natives. I think I will find some awesome quotes to share with you on this blog. As you can guess, I am getting a bit excited about going to Charlotte. VEMA is in Roanoke this year which is also an easy drive. The hotel is beautiful, the sessions are held on the conference side which makes it very comfy. There will be fires in all the fireplaces and a cookie when you check in. The committee ( I'm on it) is hard at work getting great sessions and keynote speakers to wow you. I think I will have to apply to be a Walmart greeter though- might have to earn some extra cash for all these really cool library trips! Registration is open for AASL and before you know it, VEMA will be opening registration. Think about it, we would have an awesome conference experience and return with so many awesome ideas!!