ALA Midwinter Meeting is in Dallas, TX!

The American Library Association's Midwinter Meeting is here in Dallas, Texas on January 20-24, 2012. You can now register for both the Midwinter Meeting in Dallas & the Annual Conference next year in Anaheim, CA until September 30, 2011 at a discounted price. Click here for bundle registration information.

Events at the Midwinter meeting include:

• Workshops, Committee Meetings, and Discussion Groups
  
• Opportunities to hear from authors and illustrators
• Youth Media Awards will be announced. Winners of the Newbery, Caldecott, Printz, and Coretta Scott King Book Awards will be announced at the Midwinter Meeting.
  
• Networking Opportunities
• ALA JobLIST Placement Center will be open January 8-9, 2011. Note that this is prior to the actual conference. Placement center hours are 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Facilities are available to employers who wish to conduct interviews at the event. ALA JobList also presents career development workshops. Check their website for information on workshop sessions at Midwinter Meeting and Annual Conference.
  

All of this and much more will take place here in Dallas. Will you attend the Midwinter Meeting?
Visit the American Library Association website for more on ALA.

Teach Away

I wrote about Teach Away in my previous post. Today, NBC Nightly News aired a story on the agency. The story is embedded below. Needless to say, after the story aired, the Teach Away website crashed due to increased traffic. For more information on the agency, you can also visit their Facebook page.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

I Need A Library Job

As we celebrate Labor Day, I think about the librarians and teachers who are still looking for jobs. I have been there, and I know it is not easy. It may seem that job opportunities are slim but keep looking. One place to look for jobs is I Need a Library Job or INALJ . Check out their Facebook page and Twitter feed. Jobs are posted on both the Facebook page and Twitter feed daily. This jobs list was created by Naomi House, a reference librarian outside of Washington, D. C. , and Elizabeth Leonard, a library director in New Jersey. They meet while taking an online course at the Rutgers School of Communication and Information, Masters in Library and Information Science program. Their jobs list has thousands of subscribers.

I am a Senior Volunteer Contributor to INALJ. ;-) It is a great way to see what job opportunities are available here in Texas, Nationally, and Internationally. It also gives you an ideal of what employers are looking for in new job candidates. With that in mind, perhaps you can take a few university courses or go to some professional development classes, and sharpen your skills so that you can stand out in the crowd. Be sure to join the Facebook and Twitter INLJ pages. To get the daily email digest of job listings send an email to: ineedalibraryjob@gmail.com

If you are looking for opportunities in medical librarianship in the DFW check out HealthlLine. HealthLine is an organization of medical libraries and medical librarians in the North Central Texas area. They meet every quarter. The meetings provide those who attend a great opportunity to network and learn about what is going on in medical librarianship.

If you are thinking about teaching overseas, check out Teach Away. Teach Away is a teacher recruitment agency based in Canada. I connected with a teacher from Dallas via Facebook, who landed a teaching job in the UAE with Teach Away. He has been teaching there for two years, and says that there are a lot of opportunities for educators in the UAE. Be sure to visit their Facebook page. Teach Away has job opportunities in Asia, Europe, and the Middle East. I think it would be a great adventure to teach or be a librarian abroad.

Here is a bit of news for librarian job seekers: The Texas Library Association is having a webinar called Tell a Great Story, Get a Job on September 15, 2011 at 2 pm. For more information click here. To learn more about The Texas Library Association, visit their website: http://www.txla.org .

News You Can Use

I've decided to update this blog on a regular basis to provide information that librarians and teachers can use. With that being said, here is some news about a fairly new education and technology conference called SXSWedu . The conference is a joint venture of SXSW and the Texas Education Agency. It will take place March 6-8, 2012 in Austin, TX. Here is a link to the website: http://www.sxswedu.com/ . 2012 will be the second year of the conference. LeVar Burton is listed as one of the keynote speakers. It would be great if school librarians attend and present at the conference, seeing that The Atlantic deemed SXSW 2011 "The Year of the Librarian".

Going Forward

I really enjoyed learning about the online tools that we can use to promote library services and resources using web 2.0 tools. I've thought about ways to promote the various sites. Perhaps adding a link to the blog or wiki in the signature line of emails. Maybe even making posters and book marks to promote the sites.

Book Review

This beautifully illustrated adaptation of a South African Folktale by John Steptoe is about two very different sisters. Manyara is beautiful but has a short temper, and little humility. However, her sister Nyasha is not only beautiful but considerate and kind to all she encounters. Their father Mufaro gets word that the King is looking for a wife, and they travel to the city to meet the king. Without giving too much away, the readers learn that showing others kindness and humility goes a long way. I highly recommend this book for elementary and middle school students who are studying folk tales and fairy tales. It is a great way to expose students to culturally diverse texts.

7 Things Online- Blogs and Wikis

I am now participating in a course called 7 Things Online. For this post we are to discuss the difference between a blog and a Wiki. If I remember correctly the word blog is short for web log. A blog simply lists posts by it's author. The posts may contain pictures and links. People who read the blog can comment on each post. Where as a wiki is a website. The wiki is created by one user with various themes or topics in mind. Other users can post comments to the wiki and/or edit pages on the wiki. ;-)