Do you find yourself lacking in conversational topics this holiday season? (If you are a librarian, you have all sorts of interesting knowledge, so probably not, but just in case!) Reader’s Digest Canada compiled this slideshow of intriguing holiday traditions that are celebrated in different places around the world. Don’t be put off by the goofiness of Number One – they are fun to learn about and the pictures are great too!
Interested in reading some winter books that aren’t holiday themed? This article from Book Riot should help you out! The article includes several books that delve into some of the older traditions of the winter season. Daylight is short, and the nights are extra dark and long, so it seems logical that some spooky and mystical traditions exist during the season!
The list also thoughtfully makes a suggestion for your probably stressed-out body with Four Seasons of Mojo: An Herbal Guide to Natural Living that includes techniques to help with winter-related ailments like colds, flu, and depression.
Finally, since it’s likely you will be around some kids at some point during the winter season, you can’t go wrong with Tomie dePaola’s The Legend of Old Befanawhich tells the traditional Italian story of an old woman and her flight to find the baby Jesus.
Extra credit: Not included on the list in the article, but also incorporating enchanted creatures and magical forests (although technically, yes, it is about Santa) is L. Frank Baum’s The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus which I grew up enjoying!
Do you know of any Yule or traditional winter folk books that we should be reading? Tell us in the comments!
We all feel it, and the end of year can bring all kinds of extra stress for us with the semester winding down and holiday celebrations winding up. Working in libraries is no protection against workplace stressors; in fact, working with patrons – which is generally rewarding – can provide a significant amount of stress in our daily work.
I have spent a lot of time talking with library people across the country about workplace stress, and it was pretty depressing. Most of us are here because we enjoy our jobs, they provide us with a lot of professional satisfaction, and despite the problems we face libraries are still great places to work!
But minimizing discussion of workplace stress just minimizes the real problems we face. It is better to face the issue, and to help ourselves and our staff to resolve problems that can be fixed and to get some training to handle problems that cannot. Stress causes all kinds of problems, from an uncomfortable workplace to workers suffering from burnout and never able to return to their jobs. Employee health is an important part of providing good service, and stress can just torpedo that.
Everywhere I went to conferences to talk about stress, people would come up to me and whisper that they were glad someone was talking about this. They thought they were alone in it, that they were doing something wrong because they were feeling stress.
Ignoring stress does not make it go away!
Thinking that “real” librarians wouldn’t get stressed is incorrect!
Acknowledging this is an issue in our profession is important – and the best way to help us all to overcome it. We need to think about ways to manage workplace stress on the individual level, in our library organizations, and across the profession.
So this is our December Monthly Topic: Stress Management. We can’t fix everything in your workplace, but we hope we can give you some tools to work with and some ideas to think about in your library. Continue reading Stress Management: Why Bother??→
Have you been looking for new ideas to spice up your storytime? Sign language with babies and toddlers can be a fun addition! It encourages participation and can make the experience more interactive and entertaining.
ALA is offering a webinar “Liven Up Baby and Toddler Storytimes with Sign Language Workshop” and CMLE wants to extend an invitation to any interested librarians that may want to participate! If we can get just two additional people that would like to come view this webinar from CMLE Headquarters, we will qualify for the group rate for the workshop, which is $40 instead of $60.
The online workshop is 90 minutes long and begins at 1:30pm on Wednesday, Dec. 7th.
At the completion of this workshop, you will be able to:
List 3 benefits of using sign language with young children
Describe at least 3 ways to use sign language in baby and toddler storytimes
Demonstrate 3 ASL signs appropriate for use in baby or toddler storytimes
You can find more information about the workshop here.
Accessibility for individuals with disabilities is an important topic for any library. Not only is this a legal requirement for virtually all libraries, but it is also important to ensure that our libraries are welcoming and inclusive for all members of the community. This is particularly important when considering the way you offer your online materials. The four resources below make accessibility improvements approachable, no matter the staffing level of your library or the level of technical experience that you have.
ARL’s Web Accessibility Toolkit – Though created and maintained by the Association of Research Libraries, this toolkit has resources that will be useful to those working in any kind of library. The toolkit includes definitions and background information as well as best practices and a step-by-step process for fostering accessibility at your library. In addition, it has a resources section that includes a detailed page on best practices and resources for adding captions to your library’s video content.
WAVE (Web Accessibility Evaluation Tool) – WebAIM offers a wide array of web accessibility tools, information, and resources, but if I had to pick just one to recommend, it would be WAVE. This tool makes it simple to do a quick accessibility test of any website for which you have the URL. The resulting report provides detailed information in a way that is easy to read. While this tool might not catch every single potential problem on your site, it is an excellent way to find particularly troublesome issues.
Contrast Checker – One frequently overlooked aspect of accessibility is color contrast. This is important not only to those who are colorblind, but also for users who have low vision or are reading in low light. But, despite the fact that contrast is important to a large number of users, it is frequently ignored in the name of design aesthetics. This tool will not only allow you to check specific colors to ensure that they meet accessibility standards but will also let you save and share color pairs that work well (or poorly).
The Principles of Universal Design poster by NC State University College of Design – This resource moves a bit beyond basic accessibility to the concept of Universal Design, which is design that is “usable by all people, to the greatest extent possible, without adaptation or specialized design.” The poster sets forth the seven principles that are central to Universal Design and offers multiple examples for each principle. Implementing these principles will not only help to make your library more accessible, but will also make it welcoming for the widest possible range of users from those who are in a rush or have their hands full to those for whom English is not their first language and beyond. This poster is a great crash course on the topic and will almost certainly spark ideas for ways to make your library more inclusive.
I hope these resources will help you to improve your library’s accessibility and introduce you to new tools that will streamline your processes. If you have any questions, let me know in the comments or contact me on Twitter where I’m @CarliSpina.
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