News May 18, 2007 (mp3 file: 6.2 MB, 6:47 min.)
Blogs for Readers Advisory and online module for trustees; more Meditations on marketing your librar; More interesting techniques for storytimes

At the top of the ‘cast today is: blogging and Readers Advisory

Reader’s advisory (the right book for the right person at the right time) and blogging are two things that I love, and a new project combines the two of them in a way that I think will benefit librarians but, more importantly, library patrons.

The iread blogs were created to bring together the reading experiences, tastes and reviews of librarians together in a single place, to be shared. Many librarians contributing to the mysteries blog, for example, means that many libraries (and therefore readers!) will be able to see the reviews of more books than the staff of any one library could hope to find time to read and review. Libraries can link to the blogs themselves, or use the rss feeds from the blogs and publish the feed on their websites—with much less work on their part than if they had to do all the reading and reviewing by themselves.

The series of blogs include: Rad Reads for Teens, I Read Mysteries, I Read Romance, I Read Sci Fi and Fantasy, I Read Fiction, and I Read Nonfiction. (We don't have any blogs for children's books yet, but I'm all for it, if you're interested--and have some good titles and ideas for them.

I've created a short online tutorial about the iread blogs, and contributing to them. (Contributing is very easy, and it will give you a chance to dip your toes into blogging, if you haven't had a chance to do that yet.) There is also a resource page on the web with information and links about the iread Blogs. Please join us--the more librarians contributing, the more useful the blogs will be to the library/reader's advisory world!

On another online module note, I have also just created a self-paced module which is a sort of orientation introduction for library trustees—it doesn’t replace your local orientation for new board members but it might supplement it, or even act as an informational piece when recruiting more trustees. I know some of you will be getting new trustees on board on July 1. I’m planning more trustee modules—they’ll be under 10 minutes and might be a review for trustees, or information for new trustees and they can be accessed over the Internet by trustees at home, or might be shown at a board meeting for discussion. Stay tuned for more of those.

Links from today's podcast:

• SWILSA's Youth Services webpage (Scroll down to find bookmarks)
• "If you like..." Boomarks Posted on the Iowa Library Service Areas' Readers Advisory page
• Monthly bookmark selections Posted on the State library website under "Telling the Library Story -- Props" (And Sue wouldn't tell you this, but Karen will--Sue does these bookmarks every month and shares them with the rest of the state.)
• American Library Association
  

Books reviewd by Marcia:

• A Treasury of Trickster Tales, by Valeire Marsh. Alleyside Press, c1997.
• Story Puzzles: Tales in the Tangram Tradition, by Valerie Marsh. Alleyside Press, c1996.
• Terrific Tales to Tell, by Valerie Marsh. Alleyside Press, c1997.
• Beyond Words: Great Stories for Hand and Voice, by Valerie Marsh. Alleyside Press, c1995.