LASL October 2025 Newsletter

Happy October!

Fall is in the air! The weather has gotten cooler (at the time I am writing this, at least), and Halloween decorations and pumpkin patches are popping up. Fall is my favorite time of year, so I have been trying to make a point of spending some time outside each day. Sometimes, I am outside with my computer doing work (right now!), but, at least, I am outside!

I hope that everyone has been having a good school year so far. We have our parent/teacher conferences coming up, my third grade students are doing a deep dive into primary sources, and I am excited to be attending AASL this month. If you are not able to attend AASL, don't worry...LASL has some exciting PD opportunities coming up for you "in the neighborhood." Please read on and mark your calendars for

LASL PD Day

and

School Library Day at the LLA Annual Conference

(with special guest the Book Doctor!)

In addition to our local conferences, the October newsletter is full of information and opportunities for our Louisiana librarians. We are still looking for volunteers and would love to get to know you better through our Membership Survey. Below you will also find information about the Louisiana Teenage Librarians Association (I wish I had known about this when I was a student!), Media Literacy Week, the ALSC National Institute, and an opportunity to share your library story through OurStoryBridge. (A couple of years ago, I started an oral history site sponsored by my school through OurStoryBridge, and it is a wonderful way to elevate voices and preserve history.) We would also love to include more retired librarians in our membership and events. Please forward this newsletter to retired librarians with whom we might have lost touch!

If you need support and/or have questions, please contact us at geauxlasl@gmail.com. If you know someone who is not receiving these newsletters but should be(!), please forward it on to them and ask them to email us with their email address.

Happy Halloween!

We Need YOU!

Best,

Soline Holmes

LASL President

We are very excited to announce that we will be hosting our Annual LASL Professional Development Day on Saturday, January 10, 2026 at Captain Shreve High School in Shreveport.

Lunch will be provided!

We are now accepting proposals for our PD Day.

Proposals are due by Monday, December 1, 2025.

(You will be notified of the status of your proposal by Monday, December 8.)

More details to come!

The Louisiana Library Association will hold its Annual conference on March 5-7, 2026 at the Lake Charles Event Center, and Saturday, March 7 will be SCHOOL LIBRARY DAY.

As a special treat for the day, LASL has arranged for Demco's Book Doctor Kimberly Young to lead a Book Repair workshop session on Saturday morning, and she will be the keynote speaker for the Saturday lunch presenting "More Books in More Hands." You don't want to miss these!

We'd also LOVE to hear from you about what you have been doing in your school library. Please submit a proposal for LLA! Program proposals are due by 11:59 p.m. CT on October 27, 2025. (Notification of accepted proposals will be sent by December 1, 2025).

We know that you are doing cool and amazing things in your libraries--this is your opportunity to share and collaborate with other school librarians from around the state! If you have any questions about program proposals for LLA, please reach out to geauxlasl@gmail.com.

To submit your proposal, click here!

LASL would love to reconnect with retired librarians. (We recently realized that we had lost touch with some retired librarians because we only had their work address which was no longer in service.) If you know a retired librarian, please share this newsletter with them! If you are a retired librarian and received this email through a forward, please email us at geauxlasl@gmail.com to be added to our newsletter list!

The mission of the Louisiana Association of School Librarians is to promote and to maintain high standards of school librarianship, to serve as a medium for the exchange of ideas, and to encourage a continuing and critical evaluation of school library service. To better do this, the LASL Executive Board wants to hear from you! What are your preferences? Your needs? How can LASL be here for YOU? Please fill out the survey below so that we can get to know our members! Remember, if you are a school librarian in Louisiana, YOU are a member of LASL!

LASL is looking for representatives from across the state to work with the LASL Board during the 2025-2026 school year. Want to be more involved in LASL? Want to be a part of the future of school libraries in Louisiana? Want a great role to add to your resume? Want to meet and hang out with other school librarians? If you answered "yes" to any (or all!) of these questions, please read on and fill out the LASL Volunteer Form. If you already filled out the form, we ask that you please complete it again...now that we have added a slot for your name! (Sorry!)

To learn more and to express your interest, please click here to complete the Volunteer Form.

What is LTLA?
The Louisiana Teenage Librarians Association (LTLA) is a state organization composed of individual library club members from throughout the state. It has a full slate of student elected officers and an executive committee which conducts business under LASL.

LTLA has been in existence since 1950 and holds an annual conference, and a fall and spring newsletter keeps members informed of upcoming events. This year's conference will be March 1st and 2nd at the Tall Timbers Conference Center in Woodworth, Louisiana.

LTLA's motto is: READING, KNOWLEDGE, SERVICE which enables members to plan meaningful and varied leadership experiences in carrying out club work.

Who may join LTLA?
Any club whose sponsor is a member of LASL and has an organized Library and/or Media Club at their school.

What Brings Us Together?
Both students and librarians gain much from an exchange of ideas, the making of new friends, and the various experiences that are long remembered from their association with LTLA.

For more information, visit the LTLA website or contact Wendy Herumin at wherumin@centralprivate.org.

Celebrate Media Literacy Week with your students from October 27-31. Inspired by Canada's Media Literacy Week, the annual U.S. Media Literacy Week is hosted by the National Association for Media Literacy Education (NAMLE). The mission is to highlight the power of media literacy education and its essential role in education all across the country. U.S. media Literacy Week calls attention to media literacy education by bringing together hundreds of partners for events and activities around the country. The theme for U.S. Media Literacy Week celebrates one of the five components of media literacy's definition each day of Media Literacy Week: Access, Analyze, Evaluate, Create, and Act.

To learn more and to sign up to participate in Media Literacy Week, click here.

Do you have a story to tell about book bans, loss of grants, or other restrictions that have changed your ability to serve your students? OurStoryBridge Inc., the 501(c)(3) charitable nonprofit that supports the collecting and free sharing of digital short-form oral histories of three- to five minutes has created OurStoryBridge Listens: Present in the Moment, the new, non-partisan project that documents the current circumstances in the United States that are deeply impacting Americans and others around the world. This project is librarian-led, all volunteer, and stories can be taken on Zoom and be anonymous.

Email OurStoryBridge at listen@ourstorybridge.org to schedule a Zoom to learn more or to tell your story. You can follow OurStoryBridge on social media at OurStoryBridge Listens.

The Louisiana Department of Education has finalized the Louisiana Library Program Rubric, and it is now available on the LEADS site. It is linked under:

Louisiana Educator Evaluation > Observation and Feedback

There is still time to sign up for Battle of the Books!

Are you a librarian with students in 3rd-5th grade and/or 6th-8th grade? Your school can participate in Battle of the Books with other Louisiana schools/libraries. The Louisiana Battle of the Books is based on the Louisiana Young Readers' Choice nominated titles.

The Battle of the Books is a great way to get your students excited to read! And it does not require a lot of work from you as the librarian.

Click here for more details and for the full criteria.

Reach out to Past President, Kristy Barker for more information: kbarker@centralcss.org.

Are your students ready?! ......

To renew your LASL membership, please renew your Louisiana Library Association membership by clicking here. You can base your level of LLA membership on your library's budget rather than your salary. When you renew your LLA membership, be sure to add LASL as your section!

Do not worry if you can't renew, you will still have access to all things LASL including this newsletter, any LASL alerts, and our PD days.

The ALSC National Institute provides a two-day professional development experience where attendees will "Play. Learn. Connect" - a weekend of embracing the library as a playful space, learning together, and connecting with colleagues from near and afar.

Thought leaders, practitioners, educators and more are invited to submit a program proposal as part of the educational program slate for the 2026 National Institute in Buffalo, NY, October 1-3, 2026. Seasoned and first-time presenters are invited to share their knowledge, experiences, ideas and research with their colleagues from across the country.

This year, the National Institute will include education program tracks specifically for librarians in teen services and school librarians. Presenters will have an opportunity to note their programs' relevance to those tracks on the submission form.

All proposals are due by Friday, October 31, 2025 at 11:59pm CT. Late proposals will not be accepted. Learn more and submit yours here!

Email: geauxlasl@gmail.com

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