🔖📚 Read A Pennsylvania Public Library Had Funding Cut Because of LGBTQ+ Books. Then, An Olympian Stepped In..
An important reminder from Kelly Jensen about how libraries are on the ballot today in many places.
🔖 Read The US library system, once the best in the world, faces death by a thousand cuts by Brewster Kale (The Guardian).
A useful reminder that even publishers come for libraries now, with restrictions on digital lending.
If, like me, you grieve Halloween’s passing, I’m delighted to inform you that I have officially extended Halloween season. The last day of the season is now November 22.
Get ready for a jump scare next time you open this backpack.
📚 Reading Notes—Collection Management for Youth: Equity, Inclusion, and Learning)—Chapter 1: Why a focus on equity?
Collection Management for Youth: Equity, Inclusion, and Learning
Here’s the publisher’s summary of this book:
With a renewed emphasis on facilitating learning, supporting multiple literacies, and advancing equity and inclusion, the thoroughly updated and revised second edition of this trusted text provides models and tools that will enable library staff who serve youth to create and maintain collections that provide equitable access to all youth. And as Hughes-Hassell demonstrates, the only way to do this is for collection managers to be learner-centered, confidently acting as information guides, change agents, and leaders.
I’m reading an ebook so quotes won’t have page numbers.
⭐ systemic inequalities ⭐
“Advancing equity must be our goal.”
⭐ “Equity means that everyone gets what they need to thrive no matter their identity or zip code. When we focus on equity, our ultimate goal becomes justice.” ⭐ GREAT DEFINITION OF EQUITY
demographic data = useful for trends, not getting to know individual youth & communities
opportunity gap: marginalized youth disproportionately experience it
EVEN IN HIGH-RESOURCE ENVIRONMENTS:
- special ed
- discipline
- school climate
“Libraries are not immune to perpetuating inequities.”
disconnection & exclusion
outsider in the library
behavior control → denied access
LIBRARY MAY BE ONLY SOURCE OF INTERNET ACCESS
< ½ LGBT YOUTH CAN FIND INFO @ SCHOOL
in/accessibility
chilling effect of book challenges
LIBRARY STAFF MUST FACE SYSTEMIC INEQUITIES
GORSKI equity literacy framework
“BE A THREAT TO THE EXISTENCE OF INEQUITY”
- RECOGNIZE
- RESPOND → immediate term
- REDRESS → long-term
- CREATE & SUSTAIN bias-free & equitable environments & cultures
STRUCTURAL IDEOLOGY MODEL
it challenges:
- deficit view → asset
- paradigm → abundance
DEVELOP COLLECTION POLICIES THAT DON’T REPRODUCE INEQUITIES
Focus on what you CAN DO
MOVE BEYOND MAKING SPACE → YOUTH MUST BE ACTIVE PARTICIPANTS & LEADERS
Other reading notes for this book: Introduction
Reading Notes—Collection Management for Youth: Equity, Inclusion, and Learning—Introduction
Collection Management for Youth: Equity, Inclusion, and Learning by Sandra Hughes-Hassell
Here’s the publisher’s summary of this book:
With a renewed emphasis on facilitating learning, supporting multiple literacies, and advancing equity and inclusion, the thoroughly updated and revised second edition of this trusted text provides models and tools that will enable library staff who serve youth to create and maintain collections that provide equitable access to all youth. And as Hughes-Hassell demonstrates, the only way to do this is for collection managers to be learner-centered, confidently acting as information guides, change agents, and leaders.
Roles held by the manager of a learner-centered collection:
- change agent
- leader
- learner
- resource guide
Goals of the learner-centered collection manager:
- Ground collection development decisions and practices in an equity framework.
- Adopt a learner-centered model of collection management that guides collection decisions and demonstrates accountability in the learning process.
- Redefine the role of collection manager to support the concert of library staff serving as a teacher and information guide who actively centers equity in their collection development practices.
- Apply appropriate strategies and tools for working in the learner-centered, equity-based paradigm that demonstrates knowledge of the learner, recognition of equity issues, familiarity with educational theories, awareness of resources, and attentiveness to the uniqueness of the community the library serves.
- Form a community of practice that shares responsibility for defining, developing, and evaluating the development and delivery of library resources to facilitate youth learning and advance equity.
The equity framework:
- learner-centered
- library staff as teacher
- library staff as information guide
- educational theories
- unique community
- community of practice
An equitable access environment reflects:
- learner characteristics
- best practices in pedagogy
- changes in resource knowledge base
- partnerships with the broader learning community
- commitment to equitable access
I often find myself watching movies in 22-minute chunks, partly because of being a parent and partly because of having a short attention span lately. I do TV shows with act breaks, so 3 or 4 breaks as I watch where commercials would be. It’s been liberating to realize I can do this. 📺🍿
📺👱♀️ Buffy’s experience in the episode “I, Robot… You, Jane” is super relatable. I had two friends with online boyfriends around 1997 and I wasn’t sure about them (though I became friends with these boyfriends). Fortunately, they weren’t digitized demons. Just teen boys.
📚 It's cozy fantasy season!
I think between reading a few Gothics (The Fall of the House of Usher, The Turn of the Screw, The Haunting of Hill House, The Hacienda) and watching Mike Flanagan shows, I’ve scratched my Gothic itch and it’s now time for me to turn to cozy reading. And because I’m me, that means cozy fantasy.
I first learned about Cozy Fantasy when I heard about Wyngraf Magazine, which I think I learned about in the Signal Boost section of Alasdair Stuart’s The Full Lid, which I learned about because it was a Hugo nominee for best fanzine. And I was looking at the Hugo nominees because those are the awards from the World Science Fiction Convention aka Worldcon, which is mentioned on Wikipedia’s page on fandom as an early and ongoing convention. (Yes, this is an example of how my web wanderings work and how much I love to live the dream of the 1990s.)
The note about Wyngraf talked about fantasy in the vein of The Hobbit and Redwall and I thought it sounded good and like exactly what I needed in a world that has been both personally and globally terrifying for years.
Cozy fantasy is exactly what it sounds like: a cozy mystery with magic instead of murder. (Some cozy fantasy is also cozy mystery.)
Here are some cozy fantasy titles I’ve read in the past few years:
- Redwall
- The Hobbit (audiobook version narrated by Andy Serkis, highly recommend)
- Howl’s Moving Castle
- Smith of Wootton Major
- Farmer Giles of Ham
- The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches
- Emily Wilde’s Encyclopedia of Faeries (this is included on a lot of cozy fantasy lists but it’s a bit high-stakes for me to think it’s super cozy)
- The House in the Cerulean Sea
I’ve read the first issue of Wyngraf and am a little ways into the second. I believe I’ve read all the flash fiction on their website. I have the other issues, as well as their book of cozy poetry and a book compiling their flash fiction. I own the ebook of Bard City Blues. I’m currently debating whether to also buy the paperback. (Leaning toward yes.)
Cozy is a vibe: good food, good friends, low stakes. Things like opening a coffee shop or hunting for the tavern cat who’s gone missing (he’s fine, just stuck somewhere). It’s the fantasy version of a Hallmark holiday movie.
Want to join me in reading some?
Photo by Pavan Trikutam on Unsplash
LinkedIn: Recommended job for you! FBI Special Agent!
Me: Ooh, I wonder if I can get assigned to The X-Files.