📚The Library Lowdown

Thank you, teachers, for the incredible gift of dedication you give to your students. This has been perhaps one of the most difficult years of teaching and you have powered through! I hope you have a great week and realize the impact you have on your students. You are appreciated!

Storyvoice is hosting live author events, celebrity guest appearances, and interactive read-aloud shows to celebrate! Click on the image to the right for the full schedule. Click here to join live from a computer, phone, or tablet.

Here are a few K12 resources to help celebrate and learn about the culture of Asian and Pacific Americans. There are booklists for all grade levels, classroom resources, and interviews with authors. I also created a choice board for K-5. There's an Asian Pacific American Heritage Month collection in Sora filled with great reads for all ages. Check it out here.

To log in, select Eugene School District and log in with your 4J username and password. This video demonstrates how to log in.

Here are some fun activities to help celebrate Star Wars Day on May 4th!

AudioFile Sync is fabulous and is offering two free audiobooks for teens starting now through the end of July! Students register with an email address here and they can use it with Sora! The directions are easy to follow!

Help students get access to books all summer long by encouraging them to sign up for a Eugene Public Library Card. It's easy to get a library card, click this link or phone (541-682-5450). Contact Amy Page (page_a@4j.lane.edu) if you need any assistance. Happy reading!

Meet A.S. King in person on Wednesday, May 18 at 5 pm at the Downtown Eugene Public Library. The popular and award-winning YA novelist will talk about writing and her most recent book "Switch," as well as answer your questions. Admission is free. More info.

An announcement on the American Library Association website this week highlights the 2022 AASL Best Digital Tools. There are some rad tools I'm excited to learn more about and will be featuring in upcoming PD shorts.

From their website,

“This year’s list offers something for everyone,” said Committee Chair Sam Northern. “Classroomscreen, Humanities in the Class Digital Library, and Slidesmania provide opportunities for blended learning and classroom collaborations. Noodletools and Powernotes are great options to help learners tackle the research process and organize research. Civic Online Reasoning and News-O-Matic can add to any digital citizenship lesson. And let’s not forget our commitment to developing lifelong learners and readers which iVox and Novel Effects can add engagement to reading programs.”

The recognition honors digital tools that foster innovation and collaboration, encourage exploration and participation, are user-friendly, and offer information and references. The technology resources are also evaluated for their application of AASL’s “National School Library Standards for Learners, School Librarians, and School Libraries.”

Look for highlights in upcoming Library Connections. Check out these cool tools in this Wakelet.

The World Track and Field Championships are coming to Eugene and their youth program, Making Tracks, has an awesome library of activities for a variety of subject areas and grade levels. Activities come with full lesson plans and range in topics from sustainable event planning, geometry, mindful athletics, anatomy, physics, photography and so much more! They continue to add resources weekly. Check out the menu of resources here. An account is required to download lessons, but it's quick and easy to set up.

Help get students involved in this fabulous event coming to Eugene this summer!

The Adams OBOB team took first place in the elementary virtual OBOB tournament and Howard took second! Teams from all over the region participated in this year's virtual event. It was a great success! OBOB requires months of commitment to reading sixteen books. Most successful teams have members that have read all of the books, some more than once. It takes dedication, commitment, and teamwork. Congratulations to Adams, Howard, and to all participating teams! Great work!

Need any ideas for summer reading? Get started on next year's OBOB books. You can find the list here.

That's right! Brooklyn Public Library is offering free ecards to teens nationwide! Check out this incredible opportunity for teens to have access to Brooklyn Public Library's extensive digital collection.

As stated on their site:

Brooklyn Public Library (BPL) is launching a new campaign today, titled Books UnBanned, to help teens combat the negative impact of increased censorship and book bans in libraries across the country. For a limited time, young adults ages 13 to 21 nationwide, will be able to apply for a free eCard from BPL, unlocking access to the library’s extensive collection of eBooks.

“Access to information is the great promise upon which public libraries were founded,” said Linda E. Johnson, President and CEO, Brooklyn Public Library. “We cannot sit idly by while books rejected by a few are removed from the library shelves for all. Books UnBanned will act as an antidote to censorship, offering teens and young adults across the country unlimited access to our extensive collection of ebooks and audiobooks, including those which may be banned in their home libraries.”

The card will be good for one year and is designed to complement access to resources for teens in their local communities. The Brooklyn Public Library eCard provides access to 350,00 e-books; 200,000 audiobooks and over 100 databases. Teens will also be connected to their peers in Brooklyn, including members of BPL’s Intellectual Freedom Teen Council, to help one another with information and resources to fight censorship, book recommendations and the defense of freedom to read.

To apply for the card, teens can send a note to BooksUnbanned@bklynlibrary.org, or via the Library’s s teen-run Instagram account, @bklynfuture. The $50 fee normally associated with out-of-state cards will be waived. Teens are encouraged to share videos, essays, and stories on the importance of intellectual freedom and the impact that book challenges and bans have had on their lives.

Hurry and take advantage of this awesome opportunity now! Happy reading!

Capstone's Virtual Summer Camp Adventure is back! With access to over 120 free digital books covering space, the safari, road trips, water, imagination, and history, there are plenty of fun topics to explore. There are choice boards filled with fun activities that allow kids to explore each bi-weekly theme more in-depth.

Get started now! For assistance, check out the family help page here or in the upper left corner of each choice board. Have fun!

Email: page_a@4j.lane.edu
Website: https://wakelet.com/@AmyPage5788
Location: 200 North Monroe Street, Eugene, OR, USA
Phone: 541-790-7765
Facebook: facebook.com/4jlibrarymediaservices
Twitter: @AmyPageTL