Read...and share!

Original image at http://www.julieanovak.com

Here's a challenge leading up to the new year: make this blog bigger and better!

In the (almost) three months this blog has been live, a dozen school and public librarians have shared their stories. People have clicked through to its pages more than 3,000 times! Our Facebook page has more than 200 "likes."

There are many more stories to come and I want even more people to read them. Why? Because our stories matter. It's that simple.

My challenge to you - this blog's readers - is this:

1) Tell your peers, colleagues, students, instructors, principals, and trustees about the For the Future: What Today's Youth Services Want the Next Generation to Know. Share the blog (and/or its Facebook page) via Twitter, professional listservs, e-mails, blogs, snail mail, and more. You can use this handy shortened link for the blog page, http://bit.ly/TOOdiV, and this one for the Facebook page, http://on.fb.me/UKa523 

As I did at 200 "likes," I'll continue making a donation to a reading, literacy, or library-related cause at each 100th like. I'll also make a similar donation at the 5,000 and 10,000 page views for this blog.

2) Share your stories! Do you have advice, cool ideas, or something else about your life as a children's, teen, or school librarian that you want to share? Let me know. E-mail me and I'll work with you to share your stories. Perhaps you know other librarians whose work inspires you: share their name with me so their stories can be read too.

Thanks for reading and for being part of this new adventure.

-Carol

Welcome!

Children's librarians - teen librarians - school librarians: they're all youth services librarians. I was one of them in another lifetime, a high school librarian in Indiana. For the past dozen or so years, though, I've been teaching the people who want to join this profession.

Stories matter. Those of us who work with young people understand something about the capacity of stories to define us, sustain us, and empower us. Too often, though, we lose our own stories, our own voices.

This blog has a simple purpose: to capture the stories of youth services librarians so that more people know what we do. Maybe you're an LIS student on your way to joining these ranks or a parent with a child in school or a library administrator looking for fresh ideas or just someone curious about the world.

Once a week or so, I'll post responses to a few questions from a youth services librarian. The respondents have a choice of what questions to answer and what information to provide about themselves, so not every post will look the same. I hope you'll stop back regularly to learn more.

-Carol