FROM THE PRESIDENT - Jim Tindall

It seems like it was June just yesterday! The pile of cataloging seems to have had a litter or two while our backs were turned, and our plate keeps getting fuller. That is our chaos, our risk and opportunity that comes with the exhilarating work of providing literacy and technology services to the school children of Oregon. You are not alone. Because you have chosen to be a member of OEMA, you have a kind of safety net, in this newsletter, in the Interchange, the listserv, our upcoming Fall Conference, and in the spring regional conference. And, a second opinion is only an email or telephone call away; any of us on the board of directors would welcome a call in request of support. Whether you have a challenge and need assistance from Intellectual Freedom or your looking for promotional items or something isn't working right with OSLIS, your OEMA leadership is available to make your work world better. I am happy to field any questions <tindallj@nwasco.k12.or.us>  (541) 296-1213.

Our conference theme this year is High Time in the High Desert. Chair Linda Bilyeu and her planning committee have organized a strong variety of sessions, authors, and entertainment, and I do hope you will advocate for yourself to attend this event in Redmond 14-15 October at Eagle Crest Resort. If you need assistance with that advocacy, I would be pleased to aid you. Your registration packet was mailed in mid-August. OEMA does offer First Timer Scholarships!

You can always be up to date on this and other important events for OEMA and school libraries  at the OEMA calendar site <http://www.oema.net/calendar.html>.

FROM THE MEMBERSHIP

***Secretary's Report from OEMA Board Retreat*** - Jenny Takeda

The OEMA board met on August 1 & 2, 2005 at Silver Falls.  Jennifer Maydole, Washington Library Media Association (WLMA) Legislative Liaison, was a guest speaker on library advocacy.  Jim Scheppke, our State Librarian, announced that the State library created a temporary school liaison position that one of our OEMA leaders, Patty Sorenson, has accepted.  In that position, she will do a new QEM (Quality Education Model) analysis of school libraries from 03-04 data and continue to lead OSLIS trainings.

Action items included:

*Purchasing a new laptop for the use of the Executive Director.

*Developing an ad-hoc committee to study OEMA's collaboration with OLA.

*Directing the Awards Chairs to explore a "Friend of School Libraries" award and report back to the board.

*Allocating funds from the 05 Summer Board Auction to be used to help pay for the OSLIS bookmarks to be printed.  

*Scheduling the 2007 Fall Conference to be held in Seaside.

*Making subscription to the OEMA listserv automatic with membership, with an opt-out choice.   

*Raising dues for professional members to $50 annually, effective 2006.

*Supporting the regional K-12 library professional development initiative that the Washington State Library will be working on with the Oregon State Library.

***OEMA Fall Conference*** - Gregory Lum

 Look for your fall conference packet in your mail and complete your registration form.  "High Time in the High Desert," the Oregon Educational Media Association Fall Conference, is October 14 & 15, 2005, at Eagle Crest Resort in Redmond.

 Featured speakers are Nancy Pearl, Jack Prelutsky, and Michael Hoeye.  New this year is the Beverly Cleary Children's Choice Breakfast on Saturday.  This is a ticketed event.

 If you or a colleague have never attended a fall conference, four "first timers" conference scholarships are available.  The award includes two-day conference registration, a ticket to the Celebration lunch, and one-year membership.  For the application, due September 20th, visit <http://www.oema.net/conferences/2005/Fall_Firsttimers_app.pdf>http://www.oema.net/conferences/2005/Fall_Firsttimers_app.pdf

 For more information, visit <http://www.oema.net/conferences/2005/index.htm>http://www.oema.net/conferences/2005/index.htm for conference information or contact Linda Bilyeu, Conference Chair, <mailto:lbilyeu@bend.k12.or.us>lbilyeu@bend.k12.or.us

***Conference Lunch Buddies Needed*** -  Carol Dinges

"Lunch Buddies" are needed to accompany vendors to the Saturday luncheon at the OEMA Fall Conference at Eagle Crest.  The duties are simple and fun - you will need to introduce yourself to your assigned vendor and then accompany him/her to lunch.  This is a great chance to get to know one of our vendors.  You will need to purchase your own lunch ticket, but vendors will have their own.

If you are interested in being a "Lunch Buddy," please e-mail Carol Dinges at <mailto:carol_dinges@lebanon.k12.or.us>carol_dinges@lebanon.k12.or.us

***Celebrate Banned Book Week!*** - Gregory Lum

Here are a few ideas for Banned Book Week, September 24 – October 1:

From Linda at Cascade, read Chris Crutcher's new book Sledding Hill. It is all about how a parent with the support of conservatives tries to ban a Chris Crutcher book.  It raises some great points for discussion.

From Victoria at LaSalle, have your book club (students) pick a book that has been banned to read during September.  This is a great way to start the year and make kids aware of books that have been banned

From Anne at Brebeuf, put out a display of banned books and put little signs on them about why they were banned.  It always gets a discussion going.

From Gregory at Jesuit, create a display by covering your display case with brown paper.  Cut out small holes, so students will have to "peek" at the banned books.

From Garnetta at Sandy, hold a penny vote and have students vote with their coins for their favorite challenged book.

From Ruth at Athey Creek, create a PowerPoint on the history of Censorship.  Provide images of book burning, authors whose books have been banned, etc.

From Bill at Ashland, make badges/buttons which proclaim "I read banned books!' Each badge could have a banned title on it.

From Rebecca at PSU, create a display with a table of banned books all wrapped in that crime scene yellow Caution tape.   Also, ask kids (in class or in a display) to guess why Hansel and Gretel would have been challenged. My students guessed child abuse, too intense for young children, glorification of sugar. The challenge came from a group of witches who said the book portrays witches in a bad light.

Check out these sites!

Multnomah County has many Banned Books links. <http://www.multcolib.org/homework/banned.html>http://www.multcolib.org/homework/banned.html

Also, ALA has numerous activities to celebrate Banned Book Week. <http://www.ala.org/ala/oif/bannedbooksweek/actionguide/actionguide.htm>http://www.ala.org/ala/oif/bannedbooksweek/actionguide/actionguide.htm

*** Jim T. looking for a "few good volunteers"***

The AASL Appointments Committee is still searching for really good people (leaders) to serve on the committees for both AASL and ALA.

If you think of yourself as a "dedicated, hard-working, follow-through kind of person" contact Jim Tindall <tindallj@nwasco.k12.or.us> who will in turn contact AASL.  Interested folks will be sent an ALA/AASL Volunteer Form to complete, or be directed to the electronic form online, on which they have the opportunity to choose the committee/s that best fits their interest or expertise.

***Librarian Superheroes*** - Garnetta Wilker

"Librarians/ Media Specialists: Unsung Superheroes" by Jan Burgess was published in the August 2005 issue of Middle Ground: The Magazine of Middle Level Education published by the National Middle School Association.  OEMA's Summer Institute "Building Influence" was mentioned in the article.  The article is directed at administrators and asks them some serious questions about the type of library program they have and what they are doing to properly support the library and library/ media specialists.  Jan Burgess was selected as the 2003 OEMA Administrator of the Year.

***Retirements***

Linda Schaefers is retiring this year from the McKenzie district.  She is sad to report that she will not be replaced. Another library position lost in this state because of the budget situation.

***Insights and observations from the field*** - Heidi Pramuk - George Fox University Grad. Student

Arthur Meier Schlesinger once stated, "The public library has been historically a vital instrument of democracy and opportunity in the United States” Our history has been greatly shaped by people who read their way to opportunity and achievements in public libraries." (www.ala.org/ala/news/libraryfunding) 

I believe that the role of school libraries has been -- and continues to be -- just as profound.  However, the rapid growth of information available almost instantaneously through technology and the ever-increasing wealth of print information, presents challenges to our students unlike those faced by prior generations. 

ALA's Information Literacy Standards have broadened the scope of Library Media Specialists - and focused attention on the necessity for the crucial work we do.  Library Media specialists must focus on the process of learning and utilize effective teaching practices which result in confident and competent students with the ability to access, evaluate, and utilize information in a wide variety of formats. Library Media Specialists must be proactive in becoming teaching librarians.  Learning the Information Literacy Standard as well as the state standards and curriculum maps for each grade level and/or content area gives us a unique opportunity.  We can structure our curriculum to meet teacher and student needs - incorporating information access skills into a program geared to build reading, writing, speaking, and listening literacy in any content area. Professional study is extremely important for this integration to be successful.  We must know and be able to use and instruct strategies to build reading comprehension, listening comprehension, writing and speaking competency.  We must do this with wavering political support and limited resources.

We must become the teachers who make a difference - the librarians who create living media centers as hubs of learning and enjoyment.  We are responsible for taking the standards and making them real and attainable for our students and our staff.  We put them into our practice - every day - in every lesson.

The vehicle for this is our teaching.  Whether we coordinate, cooperate, or collaborate, we must actively plan to focus on information literacy.  We must plan ahead, map out our curriculum, and determine the scope and sequence of information literacy skills we will cover at each grade level or content area throughout the year.  Once we know what we want to teach we can plan units of study which incorporate the concepts and skills.  These units could be planned and taught independently or collaboratively - depending on the individual school community.

As teaching librarians, it is our responsibility to plan units which integrate all areas of literacy with comprehensible, direct teaching of the related concepts and skills of information literacy.  Developing and using an information literacy scope and sequence and grade level/ content area library media curriculum map helps Library Media Specialists focus on crucial concepts and move beyond library = study hall, reference material supplier, or story time, to support classroom learning, and enrich and broaden students' education.  It establishes librarians firmly as teachers - teachers who impact the education of every student; who nurture the love of reading; who enable students to access, evaluate, and utilize information; who teach students how to learn; who teach to develop life-long learners.

We are in the midst of an information deluge.  Nearly 200 years ago Thomas Jefferson stated, "A democratic society depends upon an informed and educated citizenry."  (www.ifla.org)  It is imperative that we empower our students with the knowledge and skills necessary to succeed, adapt, and excel now - and in the future.  Literacy - in all of its forms - is still the key.  Plan for it, teach to it, and nurture it - because the "informed and educated citizenry" of tomorrow is in the school library today.  It is up to us to give them strategic knowledge - not only of the procedures used to learn, to think, to read, and to write - but also the procedures used to access, evaluate, and utilize information independently and ethically.  It is up to us to teach in a manner which gives our students the keys to open the doors of the future and the ability to use them wisely.         

FROM AROUND THE STATE

*** Lewis and Clark resources*** - OLA - Elaine Gass Hirsch

This is a reminder (I know, I know, as if you could forget) that this November marks the 200th anniversary of the Lewis and Clark Expedition's arrival at the Pacific Ocean.  There are many events planned in Oregon andWashington to commemorate this historic occasion, which may be of interest to you and your patrons. The Lewis and Clark Bicentennial in Oregon (LCBO) organization maintains Oregon's official Bicentennial web site.  It includes a complete calendar of related events, classroom resources, and links to other Lewis and Clark sites.  Keep it in mind!  http://www.lcbo.net

***Patricia Gallagher Picture Book Award*** - Carol Brown

The Oregon Reading Association has selected its candidates for the Patricia Gallagher Picture Book Award for 05-06.

Titles and authors include:

Clara Caterpillar by Pamela Duncan Edwards

Earthquack!, Margie Palatini

Mice and Beans, Pam Munoz Ryan

Under the Quilt of night, Deborah Hopkinson

Wait! No Paint! by Bruce Whatley

Oregon school children of all ages are invited to vote for their one favorite.  Voting is due on May 1, 2006 and should be sent to Carol Brown <carolb@peak.org>

FROM ALA, AASL, AND BEYOND

***No more smoking ads in copies of popular magazines for school library media centers*** - AASL

School library media center copies of Time, Newsweek, People and Sports Illustrated magazines will no longer contain ads from tobacco companies, thanks to a plan agreed on by publishers, tobacco companies and state attorney generals.The agreement calls for "selective binding" of magazines

going to schools, so that even schools that do not receive library subscriptions will benefit from the agreement. Schoollibrary media specialists say the magazines included in the deal are among the most popular with students. Removing the tobacco ads, say those involved in the agreement, is animportant step toward reducing the number of youth and teens who take up smoking every year.

Read more at  http://www.oag.state.ny.us/press/2005/jun/jun20a_05.html

***Recommended fantasy books for Harry Potter fans***

The Association for Library Service to Children (ALSC), a division of the American Library Association (ALA),released a recommended reading list for Harry Potter fans

once they finish "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince." Children's librarians from around the country selected books in two categories: books that have similar story elements and replicate accessibility, tone and flavor; and books that are similar in theme but may be more complex.

Read full article and get the book list at http://www.ala.org/ala/pressreleases2005/june2004abc/harrypotterbooks.htm

*** AASL adopts new Strategic Plan***

AASL adopted a new Strategic Plan at its Board of Directors meeting on June 26, 2005, during the ALA Annual Conferencein Chicago, Ill. The Strategic Plan addresses the need for providing leadership for excellence in the school library profession and school library programs, which is the core purpose of the association.  It sets an ambitious agenda for AASL to achieve universal recognition of school library media specialists as indispensable educational leaders.

Read more about the strategic planning process at http://www.ala.org/aasl/strategicplanning

***That's all Folks!*** - Linda Ague, editor

Now get up out of that chair and send in your conference registration now!

If you have information you would like to include in the next newsletter, send it to me before Oct.1.  The newsletter is published on the 5th of every month.

OEMA Newsletter -- Editor: Linda Ague

Published monthly on the 5th of the month September through May
To receive the OEMA Newsletter by email, subscribe to the OEMA mailing list using the form at http://www.oema.net/telecommunication/list.html

Send news items for the Newsletter to:
* Email: Linda Ague at ague@4j.lane.edu
* Mail: Linda Ague at Cal Young Middle School, 2555 Gilham Rd, Eugene, OR 97408