Those Wonder Twins were onto something.
A couple of posts ago, I mentioned the importance of equality. But what does equality really mean in the context of a community partnership? Read More →
Last week to celebrate Woman’s History Month several Youtube personalities created videos highlighting some of the issues with America’s gender norms.
One of the vloggers, Kristina Horner, created a video about how YA literature has become gendered. From different covers to how we label genre’s there are many ways subtle clues are sent to potential readers about what books they are meant to read.
Maybe you want to quit Van Halen to pursue a solo career.
As I have mentioned, engaging in outreach and community partnerships takes a lot of time. Since you probably don’t currently have a lot of slack in your work day, making time for outreach will likely mean giving up something else. But what? Read More →
Volunteers from a partner organization help students with college applications.
Last week we talked about finding your perfect community partner, the one who can make all your dreams come true. Once you’ve met a few potential partners and really gotten to know them, you may be ready to choose one and move forward on a shared program or project.
As you’re working with the partner to formulate the project, here are some questions to consider. Read More →
So you’re ready to embark on a micro partnership. You’ve done your community analysis, so you’re familiar with current demographic information in your area. You’ve considered which audiences you’d like to target to promote equity. Now all you need is a partner organization.
But how to choose? It’s a little bit like (very platonic) dating: who’s your perfect match?
Choosing community partners: almost nothing like The Dating Game.
A partner brings some skeptical-looking teens to the library for a research workshop. (I’m pretty sure we won them over in the end.)
In my last post, I talked about the importance of relationship-building in outreach and community partnerships. It’s not always easy to create the time and space necessary to figure out what a partner organization really needs from the library, but for a strong community partnership, it’s well worth the investment.
But “community partnership” is a pretty vague term. I should probably clarify what I’m talking about.
For me, library partnerships fit into one of two main categories. Read More →
The ALA Midwinter Meeting has ended, but the time to focus on YALSA’s work has just begun. The YALSA Board of Directors voted at the Board II meeting to establish a YALSA Board Diversity Taskforce. This taskforce has a charge to analyze the current board recruitment and selection policies, procedures and resources, and recommend improvements in order to bring more ongoing diversity to the YALSA Board.
Chris Shoemaker, YALSA’s President, is seeking members who are willing to serve on this new group. As a virtual group, there are no travel requirements to serve on this taskforce, and the group will conduct its work between March 2015 and June 2016. Find out more about the task force from the board document. If you’re interested in serving, please fill out the volunteer form by no later than March 1st.
Have questions? Feel free to email me at nicolamcdonaldwriter@gmail.com or reach out to YALSA President, Christopher Shoemaker at cinf0master@gmail.com.
About four years ago, my little department (just one other Teen Services Librarian and me) decided to make a big change. We wanted to make outreach and community partnerships the central focus of our work. We weren’t sure exactly what that would entail, or how we should go about it. All we knew was that the Teen Center in our library wasn’t exactly packing in the teens.
A relatively empty Teen Center, from the days before we began our focus on outreach.
This December, one organization is working to give girls a gift that will last a lifetime: resources to reach their potential in science, technology, engineering, and math. STEM is a prominent part of current educational models in the U.S., but girls are traditionally underrepresented in STEM-related professional fields. DeSTEMber aims to change that.
DeSTEMber is hosted by non-profit organization Girlstart. “Half of the world’s potential ideamakers—women and girls—are discouraged from developing their ideas because of social bias or inequity. More girls with more ideas create more solutions,” notes the organization. Girlstart has been working since 1997 “to increase girls’ interest and engagement in STEM through innovative, nationally-recognized informal STEM education programs.” Their work covers girls in grades K-16. (See their About Us page for more information.)
The DeSTEMber website offers a STEM activity for each day of December. The downloadable activity PDFs include instructions for the activity and a short explanation to go along with it. Each one also features links to additional resources, plus a Career Connection section that describes a profession relating to that activity. These are intended to be far more than one-time activities; they are springboards into the future, both for short-term learning and long-term education and career goals.
Interested in participating? Although DeSTEMber is almost over, these activities are relevant all year long. Girlstart also maintains a link to the DeSTEMber 2013 activity page, meaning users can access 62 free STEM resources.
Librarians and other educators interested in getting involved with Girlstart should visit their educator page.
Today, we often take for granted how teens use technology. It seems to be embedded into their every day lives and something they pick up easily. But have we ever wondered how teens use technology to help others every day, especially others who do not understand technology as well? A group of researchers at the University of Washington’s iSchool are investigating these teens, whom they refer to as “info-mediaries” (InfoMes). Karen Fisher, Philip Fawcett, Ann Bishop, and Lassana Magassa are working with mainly groups of ethnic minority teens in the Seattle area to gain a better understanding of how teens, as information mediaries are using information and technology to help others.
My group working on our app. We are in the visual stages where we are drawing out what our problem is.
To gain this insight, the research team created Teen Design Days (see video link for a longer explanation). This is a three-day workshop where the teens gathered to discuss, learn, and explore how they help people in their social networks with information and technology. The teens are paid for their time and by the end of the workshop, will have created a design project that would help them. The design days are structured around the developmental needs for teens, identified by J. Davidson and D. Koppenhaver in their 1992 publication, Adolescent Literacy as “physical activity, competence and achievement, self-definition, creative expression, positive social interaction, structure, and clear limits.” This means that along with the learning, the teens take an active role in shaping the outcome of the workshop. From designing the rules and expectations, to participating in “light-and-lively” activities (physical activity component), the teens are truly front and center. As they begin to move from discussing their role as information mediaries to more fully fleshing out designs and solutions to improve their InfoMe work, the teens talk with each other, share ideas, and revise their design.