Survey: accesible libraries

Help shape the provision of services to people with special needs

IFLA New Professionals Special Interest Group

Did you know that only 5% of the information published in the world is fully accessible to people with disabilities who have difficulty accessing reading?While we work for free access to information for all, many people are unable to access library services because of their living conditions and / or physical, mental or cognitive disabilities.

The United Nations has asked IFLA and its Section on the Library Service for People with Special Needs (LSN) to participate in a major project on the service of persons with disabilities, providing information on the survey and showing the value of libraries in achieving the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals.

NPSIG invites you to participate in this initiative on behalf of your library association, national library or individual library: we will demonstrate the strength of our unified library field by answering the following survey

https://www.surveygizmo.com/s3/3660371/Survey-on-Library-Support-for-People-with-Disabilities

Deadline: October 20.

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Words as a tool of change

An inspirational speech from Angie Thomas:

The Important Decision I Made to Create a Reading Community Classroom by Kristen Rowlands

Imagine a world where every child could read

Nerdy Book Club

As an educator I face a daily challenge. How will the work that I do today equip my students to love reading? How will kids discover they are not alone in the world through the power of literacy in my classroom?

When I graduated from college I knew I wanted to help children. I was dedicated to helping kids feel confident, loved and valued. I worked using my degree in psychology and when I had my own children, I changed my focus from social work to education. I never anticipated that the commitment I made in college to helping kids feel valued, loved and confident was most relevant and needed in classrooms across America.

I started as a teacher ten years ago. I remember being in awe of the responsibility. I was spending more time with these kids than many of them spent with their own families. How would I take a group of diverse learners, from diverse…

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Inspiring Readers: How to encourage a generation to want books by Melody Simons

Inspire children to read….

Nerdy Book Club

There are children without access to books.

How did I find out that there were children without access to books?

I became a teacher.

In my hometown.

Less than ten minutes from the school that I attended as a child.

I had children in my classroom who could not read. There were also students who could read, but said, “I hate reading. No one in my family reads.” It was gut wrenching! Most of them came from broken homes, where their parents struggled to pay rent. Reading books with their children, taking their children to the library-that was the least of their worries. I came home many nights asking myself, “How do I help these children?” I wanted to do more, and take an active role in becoming an advocate for literacy, particularly in homes where reading and books had yet to become a central focus. It had taken me 20 years…

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Education Is a Political Act by Donalyn Miller

Imagine a world where everyone had the same access to education….imagine the consequences of that act…

Nerdy Book Club

image credit: Laurie Keller

Nerd Camp Michigan (#nerdcampmi) kicks off with seven-minute Nerd Talks from a rotating group of speakers. This year’s speakers included Stacey Riedmiller, Chad Everett, Shannon Hale, Teri Lesesne, Tracey Baptiste, and me. This post includes the text of my speech. All Nerd Talk recordings will be featured on the Nerdy Book Cast this fall. 

The weekend before the 2016 Presidential election, I wrote a Nerdy Book Club post titled, “November 9^th”. In the post, I expressed my concerns about our divisive social and political climate, the widespread belief in falsehoods instead of facts, and the role that literacy might play in building an “educated, engaged, informed, and participatory citizenry.”

After the election, that ambitious list of actionable steps I suggested seemed pointless. Did I really think that hiring librarians, reading diverse voices, and teaching kids how to analyze rhetorical arguments were going to…

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Post Consumerism

So we live in a world that has so much for those in the first world, and so little in other parts of the world. I’ve struggled with this a lot, the discrepancy that exists, and also the consumer based society that the first world lives in.

I’ve been doing a small part – by choosing to shop for my clothes solely in thrift and opportunity shops. I’ve been doing this now for the last three years, and not only have I saved a fortune, I’ve also funded a lot of worthwhile charity organisations in the process.

Where possible I have also sourced second hand furniture – choosing to only buy a mattress new in the last three years. Small tiny steps in trying to counter the consumerism, but it’s a start.

I needed new plates – after a few clumsy moments I’d decimated my plates, so I found a box full at a garage sale. The lady selling them was pleased I took them off her hands, I found some great plates in the box and now have enough to last me the next ten years (since I got my last place setting from a friend who was downsizing). New glasses? Bought them at the Church thrift shop near my part time library job. Fifty cents each and the best thing, when I have a clumsy moment, or my child accidentally drops one, it’s not the end of the world.

This year I’ve decided to look at up cycling as a new way of making more out of what I do own. So I’ve found an awesome website to review: http://www.upcyclethat.com/

Awesome ideas and things I can do!!!!

 

Raising a low tech child

My son is low tech, has been since he was born. He’s not plugged into anything apart from an hour of computer games in the morning on his school holidays – which he uses to play Age of Empires or Minecraft.

Apart from that, he plays with his lego, army dudes, dinosaurs, toys or he reads books. Real books – ones that you lay on your bed, couch or in your beanbag to read. He’s a reader, because we’ve modeled reading to him. It’s not hard, ever since he was born, he’s been read to, and we’ve sat and read with him. In the early days it would be simple picture books, and he would sit cuddled up and watch as I read to him. His dad would sit and read to him, and we would discuss the books.

We didn’t set out to teach him his alphabet or his numbers before school, but when he started primary, he was equipped with a love of learning. His reading was helped by his decision to participate in the MS Readathon when he was aged six. He set his goal for 100 books in a month. He achieved that, by sitting and reading up to six picture books a night, and interspersing that with longer Geronimo Stilton books that took several nights to finish. But he did it, and it was amazing the leap forward that made across his subjects.

His ability to read has helped across all of his subjects. There is a direct link to literacy and learning in the research being published…. He’s the kid who gets excited when the teacher says it’s quiet reading time, and to get out your books. He carries books with him to read when he’s having to wait anywhere – and he’s not attached to a screen to be entertained. He’s following in my footsteps, I’m the person who you see on public transport happily reading a book, and not immersed in the digital world, but actually reading a hard copy book…..

It is possible to raise children who are literate and still able to navigate the future world. He’s having to use an ipad this year as part of the school program this year, and this I hope will not mean the end to hours spent reading his awesome collection of books. I don’t want to see him sucked into the empty vacuum that exists where there is an overwhelming urge to be connected to the net 24/7. Because there is life in the low tech world, and it’s one that values the communities we live in, where little children can help raise funds for charities through reading…..