As the new year rolls around, Dana and I have been thinking a lot about the direction we want to take Jbrary. Since the beginning, one of our goals with this blog and our YouTube channel is to highlight the youth services work taking place in Canadian libraries.
When we first debuted the maple leaf tag on our blogroll to draw attention to Canadian bloggers and YouTubers, our dear friend Angela said, “We need more maple leaves!” And we couldn’t agree more.
Over the past few months I’ve been mining Twitter for Canadian library staff who serve children, trying to make connections with as many people as possible. And it’s been a good start. But we’d like to do more here on the blog.
Are you working in a Canadian library and serving children and families in some capacity?
We would love to highlight the work you are doing! Our goal is to feature a monthly guest post written by children’s librarians, library technicians, or any other staff who answer yes to this question. We have no rules or guidelines for the guest posts – just tell us what’s going on in your part of Canada! You could describe a recent program, share some favourite storytime books, or even talk about your community. The options are endless.
Interested? Send us an email at jbrary@gmail.com!
Please share this call for Canadian library content with anyone you think might be interested in contributing. As we slowly build our network, we rely a lot on word of mouth and the reach of social media. Thanks so much!
We do a LOT of kids programming including our YouTube channel but we are most proud of a program called Bonnybooks with which we give gently used children’s books to kids who would not otherwise get to own any. Most of our books find homes on Morely reservation and Hobbema reservation. Since 1995 we have given out over 50,000 books. We have a whole system we would love to share and see replicated in other libraries.
Rose, we would love to have you write up this program in a more detailed blog post. Would you be interested? Email us at jbrary@gmail.com!
Have you connected with CLASC (Canadian Libraries are Serving Children)? They are a network with the Canadian Library Association. Details here: http://www.cla.ca/Content/NavigationMenu/CLAatWork/Networks1/Canadian_Librarians_.htm)
They also run a blog at http://claclasc.wordpress.com/
A see a great partnership opportunity 🙂
Yes, we’re actually involved with CLASC. Unfortunately, it’s been hard to get that network off the ground – lots of changing leadership and a big time commitment that is hard for volunteers to make. We’d love to see CLASC grow though, and we’ll continue to support it!