Hi, All! Anna here—on Friday, I attended Welcoming Library Spaces Where All Means All at Lawrence Public Library. The Mid-America Library Alliance (MALA) event featured Dr. Jaime Campbell Naidoo, a professor at the University of Alabama and ALSC president.
The day was jam packed with great conversation and useful resources, so I thought I’d share some with you.
Here is a selection of the great resources that Dr. Naidoo shared:
- Libraries Are for Everyone posters in many languages, free to print.
- Webjunction resources for helping Spanish-speaking patrons, which includes a “pointing guide” to help facilitate bilingual conversation and a one-hour audio course Survival Spanish for Library Staff.
- Spanish in Our Libraries – bilingual and Spanish library forms like card applications, signs and bookmarks, the Dewey Decimal System in Spanish.
- International Children’s Digital Library – online books in many languages.
- Two-page toolkit: “How to facilitate important conversations with kids using diverse and inclusive books” from Barefoot Books.
- Guide for Selecting Anti-Bias Children’s Books.
- Cheat sheet for selling diversity—brief book talks by author Grace Lin.
If you are interested in seeing the complete list of resources, including a section on available grants, drop me a note and I’ll scan and send it to you.
Huge thanks to NEKLS library staff members Karen Allen (Lawrence Public) and Kim Patton (Kansas City, Kansas Public) for making this event awesome! It was nice to see many of you there.
~ Anna