New York City School Librarians' Association

As the NYCSLA board starts to plan activities for the 2010-11 school year, we’d like to take this chance to reflect on our past activities. After a few inactive years as a chapter, the organization was reinvigorated with 133 new and returning members and this new web site (http://nycsla.org). We held a joint meeting with Hudson Valley Library Association to view some of the fabulous TED talks focusing on emerging technologies as well as our own Library Camp where we hosted 14 mini-sessions that demonstrated how librarians are using emerging technologies. In March, Sonja Cole of Bookwink presented an inspiring, hands-on presentation on how to get students involved in booktalking as a listening, evaluating, and writing activity. During our End of Year party at the Center for Book Arts we toured some of the letterpress and bookbinding technology that the Center rescued from street corners and now uses for its classes and artists-in-residence programs in Chelsea and invaded the fabulous rooftop lounge of Hotel Indigo for cocktails.

Next year we look forward to starting out the year with a library camp focusing on an array of professional opportunities for librarians in schools: writing book reviews, becoming ALA Emerging Leaders, adjunct professors, and more. Our president Sara Paulson and board members Cheryl Wolf, Lauren Soucy, Melissa Ahart, Beth St. John, Andrea Swenson, and Rena Deutsch have been key in developing exciting programs to boost our profession among librarians in NYC.

We will continue to hold meeting throughout the five boroughs to engage members that do not often make the trip into Manhattan and encourage our members to develop their own local meetings. For example, the Bronx local group held their
own end of the year party sampling different multimedia subscription resources such as Pebblego, the Manhattan local group held a brainstorming and networking session at the McKinley Library, and the Brooklyn local group held a book drive and fundraiser at Sycamore Bar. We also began a virtual young adult book club for all our members online.

Our Advocacy Committee (Olga Nesi, Melissa Ahart, Christine Hatami, and Sara Paulson) began an outreach campaign this July to increase awareness of the importance of a school librarian and library programs by providing librarian guest speakers at teacher and administrator preparation programs throughout NYC.

Thanks for all of your participation and we look forward to another exciting year!

Please come to NYCSLA’s end-of-year party!

Thursday, June 3, 2010
5-6pm  Tour of exhibitions and facilities of the CENTER FOR BOOK ARTS
28 West 27th Street, 3rd Floor, bet 6th Avenue & Broadway
6-7pm    Cocktails at GLASS BAR, the rooftop lounge of the Hotel Indigo
127 West 28th Street, bet. 6th & 7th Avenues

Door Prize:  Gift Certificate for a class at the Center for Book Arts.

Free for members
$20 for nonmembers

Please r.s.v.p. acceptances only to Cheryl Wolf at mckinleylibrary@gmail.com.

A group of librarians from NYCSLA and HVLA got together at the Collegiate School on Wednesday, April 28, 2010, to view a selection of talks from the recent TEDxNYED Conference. We watched presentations by Andy Carvin, Michael Wesch, and Dan Meyer. These and other talks can be accessed via tedxnyed.com.  One of the questions posed was: How can the innovation and idealism espoused by these innovative educators exist within the tight constraints of accountability and assessment that are driving our profession? It was a great opportunity to have librarians from both the private and public education sectors together and concerned about many of the same issues. Thanks to librarian Maggie Dixon at Collegiate for hosting this great event.