The Librarian Influencer of the Week is Kathy Lester! Kathy works as a school librarian at East Middle School in Plymouth, Michigan and is president-elect of AASL. Click here to listen now.
Here are some librarian influencer tips Kathy shared:
Start developing your relationship with your principal right away. They’ll be open to your suggestions later because of the time you invested in building your relationship.
Narrow your focus the first year to prioritize things your administrator is working on.
She recommends reading articles to find current trends in the field.
During the pandemic Kathy felt her services became more intense as she served administrators, students, teachers, and families.
Read Kathy’s Knowledge Quest article: New 2020-2021 Practices to Keep in the School Library and identify practices you will keep with the start of the 2021-2022 school year.
Kathy is passionate about Access to Diverse Resources and Services.
We are more than just a ‘book check out’ person.
Having a collection development policy and CHALLENGE policy are essential.
A collection development policy guides how you select the resources for your library. What review sources will you use to find quality books? Identify state/national reading lists to guide your selections. Having these guidelines in place can help when a challenge comes your way.
ALA has a toolkit for selection (collection development) policies.
ALA has some intellectual freedom resources that can help if you receive a challenge to a title.
You can connect with Kathy Lester at:
Twitter: @LibraryL
Email: kathylester.lib@gmail.com
Diverse Book Resources: https://bit.ly/MAMEdiversebks
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