Library at BINcA

The conference was great! It started with a stirring keynote by Rajani Larocca, author of picture books, YA fiction and nonfiction who is also a primary care physician! It was truly inspiring to hear her talk about the books and teachers who have inspired her as well as the wide variety of topics she has tackled. Just remarkable that she has written nonfiction in rhyming verse about vaccines as well as YA books inspired by 1980s music and the British Bake-off. I particularly appreciated how she talked about holding two things in mind at once and trying to write about the intertwining of her American and Indian heritages and the conflict brought about by both loving and resenting British culture.

Next, I attended a fast-paced workshop on bookmaking. The room was packed and there weren’t enough materials but I attended a workshop on bookmaking at my school last week so I could pretty much follow along. I especially appreciated the presenter, Carol Kelly, mentioning a few different kinds of books from other cultures and books including Multicultural Books to Make and Share by Susan Gaylord  to learn more about making them. Because of the workshop at my school, we have a number of teachers who are thinking about ways to incorporate bookmaking into their classes. I am thinking about teaching our cultural club leaders to make little books with the clubs that meet in the library. I think it would be great if bookmaking became a “thing” we do at BINcA.

The second workshop I attended was about sourcing books in Portuguese and was led by the librarian from Abington. She had lots of helpful hints, mostly based on the mistakes she had made and the dead-ends she had run into. She gave lots of suggestions including where to look for titles (Amazon, Framingham School Libraries, and Sora) plus publishers to look out for – Catavento Books and Seguinte Books. She also talked about how to find the MARC records from the National Library of Brasil. (Luckily, I don’t need to worry about that – the Boston Public Library takes care of that for me!)

Lunch was lovely – awards for lots of librarians and library advocates. Inspirational!

After lunch I got to hear a great overview of AI and schools by fellow Boston Public Schools librarian, Bonnie McBride. She gave a good presentation about concerns and possibilities with AI for teachers and students. It’s all so new that Bonnie reminded us not to get too attached to any particular system or AI tool because it’s likely to be gone in 6 months! Another piece of good advice: establish an AI committee at your school to help prepare for and consider the issues surrounding AI as they come up. Her presentation linked to several good resources including Diffit which we use at BINcA and Schemely, from Great Britain that links to Kahoot and youtube and makes flashcards.

At that point, I ran out of steam so I skipped the author panel and dinner but I stopped at the Wellesley Books table to buy some books by Ranjani Larocca. They look great!

Monday’s keynote was equally great – Kekla Magoon wrote about writing the books she wished she had as a younger person. In this age of people trying to erase inconvenient histories, it is more important than ever for people from diverse perspectives to write and read about the history that is most meaningful to them.

Next I went to a workshop about Sora, the ebook and audiobook platform. This reminded me that an important part of my role is giving teachers and students alike the key to finding more just right books. I went back to school the next day and shared the links for requesting books through Sora. It sounds like they are doing a good job trying to make sure our digital collections meet our young people where they are. I am looking forward to creating some slides for our next parent council meeting to explain how families can access Sora. It seems an especially good way for families to find books in languages other than English.

Next I went to hear from Kerry Cowell of Medfield about her experience with book challenges. She had lots of insight into how librarians can prepare for the possibility of a book challenge but it was clear that even if you are prepared, it can still be very upsetting. Some of her advice was defensive – Sometimes librarians have to make choices to be more quiet or blander in a public forum if they don’t want to draw the fire of book banners. We are here for the fight but we are mostly here for the kids. 

One good takeaway from this workshop is to make bookmarks for the LGBTQIA+ books so students can find them easily on the shelf but they don’t need to draw extra attention in places (like some students’ homes) where that attention is unwanted.

My final workshop of the conference was about collaboration at Wellesley HS. They had lots of good stories about collaboration attempts/fails/successes. They emphasized being flexible and providing multiple paths to meeting teachers where they are. We had a discussion at the table and one suggestion I liked was for a library “menu” for teachers. Maybe they are looking for a starter, a jumping off point kind of lesson. Maybe there are some main courses, special library lessons and maybe there are a few fun activities/desserts teachers could come try out like tshirt making and gaming.

On Monday I stayed for the author panel and I especially enjoyed hearing each author describe how they played with and incorporated languages other than English in their writing. Even though I work in a high school, I bought one picture book by each of these authors. I will figure out why, exactly, later.

All in all the conference was a fun experience. I got to meet a few of my Salem State professors but we didn’t have much time to talk. I will definitely go next year and make more of an effort to connect with people as well as learn from the presenters.