This blog has been a very long time in coming! We’ve been envisioning this kind of communications tool since 1999. It’s very appropriate to be launching the blog and the retooled buildliteracy site today. ALA’s Committee on Literacy and the National Institute for Literacy are holding the first Library Literacy Summit Webcast. This seminal event brings together librarians who are passionate about literacy across the lifespan and in libraries. Their passion translates into actions and their actions into change that ripples through the library ecosystem and really does change lives. Today, I’m urging you to visit the site, check out the resources, and post messages. It’s your chance to talk with our library leaders, share your stories, ask questions, and contribute resources.
Our goal is to keep this site current and relevant and we need your imput to make it happen. I’m looking forward to reading your comments, hearing your stories, and working with you to build literacy in libraries.
Dale Lipschultz
Literacy Officer, OLOS, ALA
We did have an exciting time in Washington DC with our first library literacy summit this week My challenge to you, whether or not you watched the webcast, is to do something within the next few weeks related to literacy with your library. For those who missed it, the Webcast will be archived soon.
If you are relatively new, the first step is to learn more. Post your questions here. Browse this site. If you are experienced, share your knowledge with others and try out new ideas. Tell us how they work (or didn’t work).
Our ALA Committee on Literacy and the many experienced library literacy practitioners, librarians, and our literacy partners can help you. We are now a library literacy community! Let’s learn together and work to always do more.
Now, we must focus on keeping the momentum going–by communicating with the federal government in an effort to restore funding for library literacy programs; by communicating with the American Library Association Executive Board, to encourage the formation of a task force to draft an association-wide statement on literacy as a core goal and product of libraries; by communicating with all units of ALA to encourage representation at the ALA Literacy Assembly and to stress the need for representatives to have a place on the agendas of unit meetings to report back to the ALA unit on each meeting of the ALA Literacy Assembly; by communicating with state library associations across the country to encourage the formation of literacy committees or roundtables within every state library association in which their members may participate; to communicate with state literacy associations to foster joint programs and partnerships with state library associations; and perhaps most importantly, at the local level, to provide products to train front line staff and volunteers to become advocates for the role of libraries in providing. literacy services to local communities, and to foster an understanding by all local library staff that, if you work at a library, literacy is your job.
Following our webcast this week, I was contacted by Mr. John Corcoran, founder and president of the John Corcoran Foundation, Inc., a literacy agency with a wide focus. lt occurs to me that we can also add as a goal reaching out to agencies of this kind (also World Education, LVA and Laubach Literacy International, etc.) to develop partnerships with libraries.
We have much work ahead of us, and this is a pivotal time in our efforts to solidify the role libraries play in the provision of literacy services. But it is important work, and we must rise to the challenge.
As an at-home viewer/listener on my computer, I found the webcast to be informative and inspiring. I have this mental image of literacy being a giant house with many rooms for the various types now being discussed: information literacy, health literacy, legal literacy, etc. But the main room, the one you must pass through to get to all the others is the ability to read and comprehend text. Adults who haven’t been able to enter this main room cannot begin to understand what is in the other rooms. ALA champions equity of access to information. Those unable to read do not have access to information. As librarians we must all take responsibility to ensure that every adult and child has the skills to enter the house of literacy.