Courtesy of http://www.welovelibraries.co.uk/

This all sounds really familiar! Suppressing information, cutting access to books and people think it only happens in fiction! Guess not – who knew that manga could foretell the future?

I like the idea of being a Book Soldier, the first shots in defending Libraries and access to books are being fired as we speak. Do we as librarians that work with young people have a duty to educate our Teens on how to protest the cutting of the EMA, provision of addresses of MPs, during the reading groups and activity sessions should we be able to run letter writing workshops to Parliament to protest the cuts. I am working on a how-to create a ‘zine programme that I will post up here soon, maybe even a workshop on protest sign making.

The youth are already rising up, I think we have a responsibility to guide them on how to do it safely (and legally)!

You can grab Library Wars from Amazon here or ask at you rlocal comic or speciality bookshop.

The mission of the International Children’s Digital Library Foundation (ICDL Foundation) is to support the world’s children in becoming effective members of the global community – who exhibit tolerance and respect for diverse cultures, languages and ideas — by making the best in children’s literature available online free of charge. The Foundation pursues its vision by building a digital library of outstanding children’s books from around the world and supporting communities of children and adults in exploring and using this literature through innovative technology designed in close partnership with children for children.

Foundation Goals

Collection

To create a collection of more than 10,000 books in at least 100 languages that is freely available to children, teachers, librarians, parents, and scholars throughout the world via the Internet. The materials included in the collection reflect similarities and differences in cultures, societies, interests, lifestyles, and priorities of peoples around the world. The collection’s focus is on identifying materials that help children to understand the world around them and the global society in which they live. It is hoped that through a greater understanding of one another that tolerance and acceptance can be achieved.

Education

To develop a greater understanding of the relationship between children’s access to a digital collection of multicultural materials and children’s attitudes toward books, libraries, reading, technology, and other countries and cultures.

Technology

To collaborate with children as design partners in the development of computer interface technologies that support children in searching, browsing, reading, and sharing books in electronic form.

Business

To provide a platform for operational excellence that insures the Library grows in strict accordance with it strategic priorities and in a manner that leverages its outstanding human and intellectual resources to achieve the Library’s mission of reaching as many children as possible with the best of children’s literature.

http://www.childrenslibrary.org/

A group of 15-19s HeadSpace at Efford Library recently hosted their own James Bond themed night called Bond James Bond. The library became the Casino Royale for the evening! The group were made over by professionals and took part in a glamorous photo shoot for the local Evening Herald newspaper. After the photo shoot we took part in a quiz hosted by Q, played Poker and chocolate roulette. This is a link to the article on the Evening Herald website and there are more photos on the Plymouth Libraries Flickr account.

HeadSpace Efford also have their own blog and Twitter account, which young people and teen librarians can follow.

- Library trolley dash -

Find as many books as you can from this list.

Write the title and Dewey number underneath:

The group will be divided into two teams. The winner will have the most books and Dewey numbers on their sheet and will receive a small prize.

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The second e-mail concerned the creation of a new discussion list that has been created for the discussion of Graphic Novels in UK Libraries – it is based upon the GNLIB list in the USA but will have a UK bias.

To join the list go to: GNLIBUK – it will be an invaluable resource as so much of what is available has an American bias, it would be good to get an idea of the state of GN reading in UK Libraries.