Your Library Should Reflect the Students in Your Building: with Colleen Nelson
The Librarian Influencer of the Week is Colleen Nelson who is a K-6 Teacher Librarian in Cedar Falls, Iowa. She shares some interesting information about Iowa’s certification process for school librarians and how her state requires each district to have one certified librarian per district, no matter the district’s size.

You can hear her interview here http://laurasheneman.libsyn.com/your-library-should-reflect-the-students-in-your-building-with-colleen-nelson.
Here are a couple of Librarian Influencer strategies Colleen shared:
Focus on building relationships first.
Try to get a copy of the district curriculum plan for the grades you serve.
Help build a culture of reading through book talks, reader advisory, and sharing with teachers.
Your Library should reflect the students in your building. She did an inventory to help her begin to analyze the collection. She decided to start with nonfiction to make it inclusive of everyone. She started with 200s, 300s, and 900s.
The blogs she follows include:
Brown Book Shelf https://thebrownbookshelf.com/
American Indians in Children’s Literature https://americanindiansinchildrensliterature.blogspot.com/
Happily Ever Elephants https://happilyeverelephants.com/
CrazyQuiltEdi https://crazyquiltedi.blog/
SLJ - Diverse books website https://www.slj.com/?subpage=Diversity,Diverse%20Books
You can follow Librarian Influencer Colleen Nelson at:
Twitter: @thesparklingtl https://twitter.com/thesparklingtl
Instagram: thesparklinglibrarian https://www.instagram.com/thesparklinglibrarian/