Lemons Out of Lemonade

Image by Rachel C from Pixabay

When presenters were - very unexpectedly - unable to make their program session two weeks ago at the ALA Annual Conference, the audience did something remarkable. They did the program themselves! 

The topic was accessibility and inclusion for children with disabilities and their caregivers. 

In this ALSC blog post, conference blogger Sara Beth Coffman wrote: "The room was prepared well for such an event, with ASL interpreters and on-the-fly closed captioning (which was excellent, by the way) simultaneously available. Upon realizing the presenters would not be arriving, a few intrepid leaders took the mic and suggested we use the time anyway, offering to tap into the collective wisdom in the room. What followed was an inspiring and truly remarkable session, full of ideas, insights, and an amazing sense of community and solidarity.

As we all began to realize what a gift this potential misstep had turned out to be, a special energy took over: someone circulated a piece of paper to gather emails for further sharing; someone else created a shared doc for distributing resources; questions were asked and answered, the mic moving around and through the room for over an hour."

The rest of the post is full of resources, links and recaps of some of the ideas and info that the librarian attendees shared with each other. Stop here to read the full post.  [Toward Inclusion and Equity for Young Children in Public Library Programs. Coffman, Sara Beth. ALSC blog. June 25, 2022.]

I think we can say that the pandemic has taught us far more than doing Zoom and make-and-take kits programming!