Fighting for Awesome at #cypd12 !

CC: JD Hancock

Sunday and Monday, I was at the fabulous CYPD Annual Conference in Indianapolis! CYPD is the Children's and Young People's Division of the Indiana Library Federation. We're lucky to have such an active youth division and the CYPD Board puts together a great conference every year with fascinating breakout sessions and inspiring keynote speakers.

This year, we were lucky enough to hear keynotes from Emily Ellis (a 2012 Library Journal Mover & Shaker), Katherine Applegate, Thaddeus Rex, and Lauren Myracle. Local independent bookstore Kids Ink sells books at the conference so attendees have an opportunity to get books signed. 

And I attended some great breakout sessions!! Suzanne Walker and Jaymi Edwards presented about their experiences starting an early literacy blog at their library: Explore to Learn. They post videos after each week of storytimes to reinforce early literacy skills and remind kids and parents about what they read in storytime. They both recommended the format they've used of having a puppet interview a librarian about what happened in storytime and generally do their videos in one take. Sammy the toucan even interviewed ME! 

On Monday, I went to a session about Summer Reading Clubs, which I was hoping would feature some ideas for next summer, but turned out to be more of a general session about Summer Reading Clubs. It's always good to share ideas with other librarians and it gave us all a chance to debrief a little bit. I also went to a session about tween programming and heard Carol Evrard of the Spencer County Library talk about some of their favorite activities for tweens.

My last session of the day was Cleaning House: The Story of a Mini-Remodel by Alyssa Morgan of the Morgan County Public Library. Alyssa shared her experiences in rearranging some areas of her department, including creating a tween area, renovating their public service desk, and ordering new furniture to make their computer area work better. Since we've recently undergone some changes in my Children's Room, I was interested to see what they had done with theirs.

I did my fair share at this conference, presenting a session on web resources for programming ideas. I talked about Pinterest, many blogs & websites for programming ideas, and Twitter, emphasizing how to use social media to build a network of professionals to brainstorm with and consult when you run into rough patches. You can have my handout: Only a Click Away: Finding Program Ideas on the Web.

All in all, it was a great conference and, as usual, a great chance to connect with youth librarians from all over the state! Thanks, CYPD!