Category Archives: School Media Specialist

Gentleman (and ladies) … Start your READING!

One Book, One Twitter is officially underway! American Gods by Neil Gaiman was selected as the first book that the “club” will read. I’ve already picked up my copy from the library, and if all goes according to plan… will start devouring tonight!

The One Book, One Twitter book club opened for discussion starting on May 5th. If you’re interested, you may wish to review the following for a system of hashmarks for tweeting and commentary…

#1b1t: General Discussion

#1b1t_1c: Discussion of Chapter 1 (and prologue material)

#1b1t_2c: Discussion of Chapter 2

… and on until the final chapter.

For additional information, and a One Book, One Twitter reading schedule, take a look at Jeff Howe’s Crowdsourcing blog – he’s the guy that started the whole thing!

Maud Hart Lovelace Book Award Winners Announced

On April 25th, winners of the Maud Hart Lovelace Book Award were announced at the Red Balloon Bookshop in St. Paul. The 2009-2010 Maud Hart Lovelace award is a children’s choice book award presented by The Minnesota Youth Reading Association (MYRA).

The winner for division 1 (grades 3-5) was Champ by Marcia Thornton Jones.

The winner for division 2 (grades 6-8) was I’d Tell You I Love You, But then I’d Have to Kill You by Ally Carter.

The award, established in 1980, honors Maud Hart Lovelace (1892-1980), the author of the popular Betsy-Tacy series about growing up in Mankato at the turn of the twentieth century.  The goal of the award is to encourage recreational reading among school age children.  Each year winners are announced on Maud Hart Lovelace’s birthday, April 25. More information is available at:  http://maudhartlovelace.org. 

U of M Libraries Send Books to Google for Digitization Project

This month the U of M Libraries will be sending resources to Google as part of a larger digitization project that was agreed upon in 2007 by Google and several Big 10 universities. The U of M will be working with Google to digitize resources on the topics of Scandinavian literature, bee-keeping, forestry, and area studies collections. In all, the U of M Libraries will be sending more than 1 million books and bound journals to Google for digitization.  

Once the materials are digitized and verified that they are public domain, Google will provide copies of the digital files to libraries. For more information, consider viewing the following links: http://tinyurl.com/2cqlxkf, http://tinyurl.com/2cr2kyw, http://tinyurl.com/2e6glx5.