Central Massachusetts Year of the Teen

Do your teens love their librarian?

The Legislation Committees of YALSA, ALSC and AASL are asking for your help with a fun project. This Valentine’s Day, have your teens flood federal elected officials’ district offices with Valentines that express love for your library and its staff and ask for support for important legislation.

The ALA Youth Divisions - AASL, ALSC and YALSA - are sending out a call to action to library workers to have teens, children, parents and library supporters in their community send “I Love My Teen Services Librarian” or “I Love My School Librarian” Valentine cards to their U.S. Senators and Representatives, and to ask their elected officials to co-sponsor the SKILLS Act and/or support LSTA funding for libraries. Their voices are powerful and need to be heard, and you can help them do that! Let the legislators know you and your patrons support:

• The SKILLs Act, which guarantees that all students in the U.S. will be served by state-certified library media specialists and will have the resources they need to succeed.
• The Library Services Technology Act (LSTA), which can help libraries of all kinds expand services and access to information resources for people of all ages.

How can you make this happen? Host a program in your public or school library and invite teens, parents, children and library supporters to make and sign “I Love My Librarian” valentines. Make it a fun craft project for the whole family!

Find out more about this exciting project on the YALSA wiki at:

http://tinyurl.com/32frpb

Add comment January 24th, 2008

DOPA comes back to life … sorta

Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska has brought new life to DOPA, the Deleting Online Predators Act that died in Congress last session. Stevens has introduced what many call “DOPA Junior” as part of the Protecting Children in the 21st Century Act. There’s a great explanation of the new legislation written by Anastasia Goodstein on the Huffington Post blog.

When will our lawmakers understand, in her words, that “real issues being raised by these technologies at home and at school will not be found in legislation but in education”? What do you think?

Add comment February 1st, 2007