Stop here to access the 2020 statistics.
Stop here to access their Diversity Statistics FAQs to understand how these stats are gathered and considered.
Brooke Newberry, La Crosse Public Library, is back with her monthly column sharing recommendations on great picture books for your collection.
Families, as we know, come in all different shapes and sizes. This month’s books highlight some of my favorite new picture books depicting diverse families and celebrating their love.
Tasha Spillett-Sumner
Little Brown, 2021
A mother embraces the love she feels for her baby as she awaits its arrival in this picture book filled with Native cultural detail.
Dave Eggers
Chronicle Books, 2021
While a grandmother watches her grandson, they experience an epic adventure by transforming into jaguars. Gorgeous illustrations and storytelling make this book a great choice to introduce imaginative play.
Andrea Wang
Holiday House, 2021
A girl discovers more about her Chinese heritage is this autobiographical picture book. Lush illustrations and simple text create an emotionally accessible book for children and adults of all ages.
Ambreen Tariq
Kokila, 2021
After a long, hard week, a family experiences their very first camping trip in this delightful picture book. The families sticks together and has a wonderful camping adventure that many kids will be able to relate to.
Susan Quinn
Quarto Kids, 2021
This beautiful celebration of dads highlights the extraordinary things a dad does during the day. Sparse text and appealing illustrations make this a great choice for storytimes.
The first published on Tuesday April 27 is entitled How Can I Tell If This is a Harmful Representation of Disability on S. Bryce Kozla's blog. Bryce has been a thoughtful leader and thinker on the topic of disability justice in libraries. Her post is a great starting point for us to think about the books we have in our collections as well as how to evaluate them to determine whether the books and other media contain harmful representations.
The second post published on Wednesday, April 28 ran on the Book Riot blog. In her article The Current State of Disability Representation in Children's Books, Margaret Kingsbury takes an in-depth look at the state of disability representation through an exploration of publisher and #ownvoices book creators responses. Using CCBC statistics and centering the voices of book creators, her article amplifies Bryce's points and enriches our understanding of disability representation.
Connect with library staff serving youth from around the state for a tour of the Rosholt Branch Library and Waterford Public Library on Thursday, May 20th from 1:30pm - 3pm!
We're Zoomin', so you'll need this link to join in the fun: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/7502399842
Are you interested in hosting a virtual tour of your library? If so, please contact Florence at labeau@bloomerpubliclibrary.org!
The Virtual Tours of Wisconsin Libraries series is made possible by your Youth Services Section of the Wisconsin Library Association.
Jamie Matczak is the Education Consultant at the WI Valley Library System and founder and driving force behind the Wild Wisconsin Winter Web Conference. She is not only a whiz at creating and curating outstanding CE content but she also has a sharp eye for what makes effective and engaging live and online presentations.
We are fortunate that she recently created a short 50 minute how-to webinar on effective tips for making your virtual presentations more effective. Created as a teaching tool for presenters at this year's WAPL virtual conference, she now shares these tips widely.
Watch it and become ever more amazing. Your audience will thank you (and her!)
There are now signs in over 100 languages that she generously makes freely available on her website for the use of any library.
Rebecca writes: "Please note that my entire site is under a CC0 1.0 Universal (CC0 1.0) Public Domain Dedication license. This means that I want everyone to download, modify, and use the work that I freely share on my blog. This is a gift back to a profession that I love.
I also want to reiterate what I’ve stated in the past I do not want my name (given or business) placed on my minimalist art. It ruins the clean lines and the message. You can totally credit me if you’d like (such as on a social media post), but it’s not necessary."
Stop here to download signs for your library.
YSS Meeting
Fri, April 16, 2021
Present: Katherine Schoofs, Jenny Wegener, Florence LeBeau, Susie Menk, Linda Jerome, Melissa Carollo, Tessa Schmidt, Taylor Wilcox
Approve Agenda
Welcome
Old Business:
o Link to new list of lapsed members: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ulZpdFHktHmcxB3UZ-OPLZUk-a6PHif7/edit#gid=55085113
o Claire will type something up for recruiting new members
§ See email from Claire (send 2/26/2021)
o As people rejoin/re-sign up or sign up for the first time send a Welcome letter from a current YSS member (make it personal
o Keep working on it
New Business:
DPI Youth Update:
You should have received a survey from UW re: pandemic planning. Even though it is one day overdue, fill out if you can.
Committee Reports
Marketing Committee - Katherine, Melissa, Sarah
· Making posters for WAPL
· Putting on YSS blog and WLA Facebook page will be shareable
Conference Committee
· WAPL: 4-person teen panel discussing how to find social media and digital platforms to find teens --Taylor May 7th @ 9:30 a.m.
· Virtual Youth Lit Mad-Lib Social event--May 4th @ 7:00 p.m.
o Host-find a Director at Large
· Continue to promote the wazoo out of WAPL & WLA - - get those YSSers there
Children’s Book Award Committee
· Nothing new
· More books to read
YSS Blog--Marge No report not present
YSS Virtual Meet Ups--Florence
· May 20th @ 1:30 p.m.
· Laura Fuller presenting from Rosholt Public Library
· Tricia Cox presenting from Waterford Public Library
· Next one in September
School-Public Libraries Group
· Next meeting: Wednesday May 19th @ 4-5pm (NEW DATE)
· Join Zoom Meeting https://us02web.zoom.us/j/88205890421
· Working hard to bring in more school libraries
· Larger invitation going out to talk about collaboration between school and public libraries
· Changing focus: trying to get WLA, YSS and WEMTA to have a closer working relationship, collaborations, and networking
· Sharing examples of what we can do out to others throughout the state
· WEMTA overwhelmed, keep working with YSS
· Blog post on April 12th--contact information available
WLA Liaison report--Linda Jerome
· Working on job description for executive director
· Virtual code of conduct-written and approved
· Please be patient with WLA staff while we are without ED
· WAPL early bird registration ends today
Respectfully submitted,
Susie Menk, YSS Secretary, April 21, 2021
This post by Manitowoc (WI) Public Library Youth Librarian and YSS Board Member Susie Menk explores questions about how we weed during a pandemic. And she's wondering....what do you think? 
Image by Katherine Ab from Pixabay
So it seems that we are seeing the light at the end of the tunnel as far as COVID-19 goes. Maybe. We hope so anyway. BUT the big question remains, what do we do now? What do we do with all those books that did not move off our shelves when we were either closed or only offering curbside pick-up? How do we determine what books to keep and what to weed after this crazy year?
My thoughts were jumbled when I was able to begin my normal weeding routine. My library has a schedule we try to follow. This schedule ensures that the whole collection goes through the weeding process on a regular basis and keeps the weeding from turning into a huge task. We weed small sections at a time, working our way through the collection so that by the end of the year we have covered the entire collection. I am fortunate to have co-workers who help with weeding so we can split up the collection into manageable amounts. I focus on non-fiction, foreign language, holiday and audiobooks. My colleagues share the fiction, our picture book collection, easy readers, and the rest of the audio visual collection. This division of duties helps us not become overwhelmed with weeding.
Now that the library is open again and we have patrons visiting us regularly, we need to get back to our weeding schedule. Right? What? Wait a minute. In my library, the purchasing part of collection development has continued throughout this pandemic year. That means we have continued to add books to our collection, which is great. In a normal year, we would be discarding books and adding books in a pretty even fashion. The goal is to keep our collection to roughly the same size. Library space is limited and we can’t go adding books and never getting rid of some. We would run out of shelves to put them on!
What to do now? How can I in good conscious weed books that most patrons haven’t even had an opportunity to look at yet? How can I determine if a book is worth keeping when it has good circulation numbers before COVID-19?
My rule of thumb right now, is if the book was circulating well pre-pandemic, I will most likely hang onto it. If the previous circulation was poor, I will still get rid of it. Basically, I am not counting circulation stats for 2020. There was just too much going on to be fair to the book. If the book was new in 2020, I will give it longer than normal time to circulate. However, I still have to be aware of shelf space, so I might check on my newer books more often than I normally would. Maybe I’ll do a check every few months instead of only once or twice a year.
2020 was a year of unusual activities and I think we need to be aware of that and adjust our weeding to compensate for that.
What about you? Are you making exceptions to weeding procedures or is it just business as usual? What are you using for a rule of thumb to guide your weeding? I’d love to hear what you’re doing!
Greetings, Wisconsin Librarians and Library Workers!
UW-Madison iSchool’s Continuing Education Services office is offering a free online course to Wisconsin residents, Effective Customer Service in a Socially Distanced World, which will run from May 3 – June 13. This six week class is open to anyone who is interested. There are no set meeting times, so you may complete the class at times convenient to your schedule, at about 2-3 hours per week. There are weekly activities to complete. This course is worth 2.0 CEUs.
To receive a free registration, please go to the course website and click the “Register online” link. At checkout, please enter the code ischoolfree in the promo code field. https://ischool.wisc.edu/
Please feel free to contact me with any questions.
Best Regards,
Meredith
--
Meredith Lowe (she/her/hers)
Continuing Education Services
The Information School at UW-Madison
600 N. Park Street, Madison WI 53706
working remotely | mclowe@wisc.edu
Dear Library Staff Serving Youth,
This is a friendly reminder about a grant opportunity mentioned in the April FAQ.
The African Studies Program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison is pleased to offer public libraries throughout Wisconsin the opportunity to enrich their collections with new titles. Libraries across the state are invited to submit proposals to purchase books and materials that will enable Wisconsin readers to deepen their understanding of Africa. Library staff serving youth are encouraged to look at winners of the Children’s Africana Book Awards. Grants of up to $1,000 are available and the deadline to apply is May 1, 2021.
Thanks for considering,
Tessa Michaelson Schmidt (she/her/hers)
Youth and Inclusive Services Public Library Consultant
Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction | Library Services
(608) 267-5077 Tessa.Schmidt@dpi.wi.gov
