New Resource Guides for Youth Librarians

A recent Badgerlink Bulletin post shared great resources that can help you in your work with kids, teens and families. They also have guides that you can link into your website.

Stop here to read the full blog post.

Fake or Real?

Pixabay

We've all heard the comment, "Why do we need libraries? We have Google."  Librarians know that not everything on the Internet is true.  And librarians are trained to help people sort fact from fiction. (Plus, libraries provided Internet access!) School Library Journal highlights the problem of people not equipped with the skills to evaluate sources in the article "Teaching Information Literacy Now." 

For public librarians, the opportunities for information literacy are brief moments at the reference desk or at the computers.  Public library patrons do not have to attend  a class on assessing sources.  They don't even have to use the sources we found for them.

How can we support information literacy?  Right after I read the School Library Journal article on Facebook, I saw a clever way to get teens thinking about their information sources.  Librarian Alanna Graves posted on Teen Services Underground's Facebook page her display "Fake or Real".  She printed out news stories and teens decided which were real and which were fake.  You could also create a bookmark listing debunking websites, like snopes.com, and highlighting evaluation methods, like CARS or IMVAIN.

What are you doing at you library?

DARE to Explore Language On a Whole New Level!

On the UW-Madison campus something linguistically magical is happening!  At the Memorial Library, from November 2 - December 30, 2015, you can explore the many varied ways American use their language to communicate.  Focusing on DARE (the Dictionary of American Regional English), the exhibit explores how "there are many thousands of differences that characterize the dialect regions of the U.S."

DARE serves as a reference work that documents words, phrases, and pronunciations that vary from one place to another across the United States.  Drawing on face-to-face interviews as well as an extensive written material cache, the collection details the variations in American dialects from colonial times to the present.

Not near the Madison area?  You can explore the exhibit online from the comfort of your desk chair by visiting http://www.darewordscount.com/

Serious Series Mojo

Kate Clauson, new blogger at House at Katie Corner, just posted about a fantastic resource that I have found helpful as well.

The Mid-Continent (MO) Public Library has created an outstandingly accessible database, Juvenile Series and Sequels, that lists for your detective-info seeking pleasure over 20,000 books in series - searchable by series, title, author, subject and book title.

Check out Katie's post and get her on your feeds and then be sure to bookmark our Missouri colleagues' library site and be magically mighty in your reference work for your patrons!