Best ALLA ever!

We were all rock stars last week. At least the Alabama Library Association convention theme held true, from the inspiration keynote from Janis Ian to acapella singing from Mountain Brook teens. Seeing Janis sing and speak brought back two poignant personal library memories. The first was my assignment, in middle school music class, to present a biographical report on Ian. It was the first time I used Current Biography, which I immediately adored and dove right into.

But, since this was well before the era of digitized music, I was never able to actually find a recording of "Society's Child" or "At Seventeen," the two singles which figured most prominently in the Current Biography article. that was, until I found the music library at my college. The first time I swung into there was to request Janis Ian to listen to in a soundproof booth.

Skyping with Myra --
Photo by Nikki Robertson

All Access to YA Authors --
Photo by Nikki Robertson

And I even attempted to incorporate the theme into my presentation, "All Access to YA Authors." It was basically a dump of the more YA-literature related selections from my RSS reader into powerpoint, so many of my favorite blogs might see a tiny uptick in subscriptions. You can download the slides, but they are not embeddable -- too big!

 Another fab literature presentation was "Access YA Reads: The Latest and Greatest in Young Adult Literature" by Barbara Bowling and Cendy Cooper, who reported from the What's New in YA literature and How to Use it in Your Program workshop from the Bureau of Education Research. They were followed by the YASRT book talks, which are always a highlight as they introduce me to new thing to read and recommend...

My favorite poster session was that of Laurie Charnigo, a former UA SLIS classmate of mine from way back, who pulled together all sorts of resources on Underground Newspapers of the 1960s Counterculture. I am thrilled to know this is available for my students.

Speaking of the 1960s, another highlight was hearing that there will two more books following the decade are planned from Countdown author Deborah Wiles, who won an Alabama Author Award, in her groundbreaking documentary novel fashion. One will center on freedom summer, another on the counterculture.