I hope the start of you school year has been as smooth and successful as possible. Always, please reach out if you have any questions or need help with anything. james.allen@education.ky.gov or Let's book a time to chat.
Please check out the updates below!
Next week! It feels impossible that the AASL conference is already here. I hope I will see many of you next week in St. Louis. A couple of things...
First. Collaborative notes are my favorite (mostly because I take terrible notes, but also because we can share with our friends not in St. Louis.) Here is a link to a Google Doc for us to share our favorite takeaways. Shortened version: readwhatyouwant.com/AASL25.
Second... If you ARE GOING to St. Louis, this doc is for you to share your phone number, email, or other method to contact you. I'll use this to help us coordinate a photo at some point, but it's also handy to have some contacts if you need a dining partner or need help at some point.
Are you new(ish) to school librarianship?
Would you like a partner to bounce ideas off of?
Have you been doing this school librarian thing for a while, like to learn, and share? This is for you too!
I will match you up!
I'm looking forward to trying some new things this year with our mentor/mentee group. Again, new folks, sign up. The lift is very minimal. I also need experienced folks to throw their name in.
Mentor/mentee Signup Form (it will ask you to sign in so I can collect your email address)
Next week (hopefully), you will see two press releases from the Kentucky Department of Education. It's already been 6 years since we published Kentucky's first set of library media standards, and it is time to reflect and make revisions.
One will be a link to a form for public comment/feedback on our current Kentucky Academic Standards for Library Media. This form is for you, and anyone who would like to share their thoughts on our first set of standards. These remarks will guide our work in revising the standards.
The second press release will be a call for applications to be on our Kentucky Academic Standards for Library Media review team. We will work to have a representative group. If you are interested in this work, please apply!
Please help me identify key metrics you'd like to see in statewide data for Kentucky public school libraries. My goal is to recreate the system we use for collecting "digital readiness." Your CIO completes this annually and provides data on staffing, instructional devices, and other relevant information.
We utilize a data dashboard to facilitate the discovery of context and connections between data points. A connected goal is to have a Library Readiness Dashboard that you can access to see averaged (anonymous) information about our Kentucky school libraries. It's going to be AWESOME! Here is the form again. (It will ask you to be logged in to the Google.)
The Kentucky Department for Libraries and Archives (KDLA) is now providing statewide access to TeachingBooks, a website of resources that brings reading to life for all readers. With more than 372,000 resources for over 97,000 children’s and teen books, this literacy service empowers patrons to learn more about their favorite books and authors while supporting staff initiatives, including program planning and collection management.
If you haven't checked it out yet... Jump on there and start exploring. Here are some cool things I found:
Our 2025-2026 KBA books! - KBA Book Resources
Author profile – Jerry Craft
Collection analysis – this looks interesting
Titles with poetry multi-leveled lessons
I'm keeping this in here... Thank you for any updates you have.
If you are retiring, congratulations! Please let me know so I can edit my statewide directory of school librarians. If you are moving to a new school or district, I'd love that information, too! Send all the updates to james.allen@education.ky.gov