Cuentos y más - Arlington, VA Bilingual Storytimes on YouTube!

I am currently teaching an online course offered through the Library of Virginia called - Connecting with the Spanish-Speaking Community: What You Need to Know Before Offering a Bilingual Storytime in Your Library.  I wanted to get a better idea of what various libraries in Virginia are doing to serve Latino children and families and in digging around, I came across Cuentos y Más - bilingual storytimes on YouTube, brought to you by the Arlington Public Library.  I'm blown away!  Way to go Virginia, and way to go librarian/host Maria Aguilar!  This is super innovative and the videos are very high quality.  On demand bilingual programming that families can access as their schedule allows.  I love that in the one that I saw, in addition to storytime, the program was exposing families to an educational resource available in the community.  The format is fantastic - fun, stories and exposure to community resources.

I would love to hear more about successful and innovative strategies in Virginia or elsewhere in the Southeast for connecting Latinos and Spanish-speakers with libraries.

Storyblocks by Colorado Libraries for Early Literacy

Colorado, way to go!  First of all, "Colorado Libraries for Early Literacy" is a brilliant statewide initiative.  Second, I love Storyblocks!  Storyblocks is a website for parents, caregivers, etc. with lots of age-appropriate videos in English and Spanish of librarians demonstrating rhymes and songs to share with little ones, helping them develop vocabulary and phonological awarenes.  This website is awesome.

I will be in Denver, CO in September for the REFORMA 4th National Conference, presenting a preconference workshop on bilingual programming for various ages with a panel of librarians from across the country.  I will love to meet with other librarians in or near Denver, or attending the conference, who are serving Latino families, offering bilingual programs, or promoting early literacy to Spanish-speaking parents.  It is always so invigorating to hear the creative ways in which others are making an impact!

What are other libraries and librarians doing in a visible way to promote early literacy and empower parents?

Las seis habilidades de pre-alfabetización

Posts have been few and far between lately, but such is the nature of May.  Final purchases are being made with end-of-year budgets, and, of course, all energy is going into planning for Summer Reading.  Our program started last week, and the Village branch staff have been doing an amazing job at making sure all families are signed up and participating in this year's program.

For a quick post, I thought I'd share a video that LPL just added to our YouTube channel.  I worked on this a few months back.  It is our first all-Spanish video, and it is about the six early literacy skills and library services.  Enjoy!

Lexington Public Library Executive Director Candidates Present to Staff and Public

The final three candidates for the position of Executive Director at my library, Lexington Public Library, made staff and public presentations on their leadership style and library trends yesterday.  The candidates are Cindy Lombardo, Don Barlow, and Brian Lewis.  LPL's hard-working marketing team and webmaster have digitized the presentations and posted them all as a playlist on YouTube, so the public can view what the candidates had to say, as well as the staff and community questions and candidate responses.  I really appreciate that this has been made available to those who may not have had the opportunity to attend the sessions in person.  Here they are.

Proteja contra los incendios!

Gabriela, my fellow Spanish Program Specialist here at CML, is a woman of many talents! Before joining our team, Gabriela volunteered her time to create this video along with the Columbus Fire Department to promote fire safety to the Spanish-speaking community here in Columbus.

There have been too many stories here in Columbus of fires destroying homes and families in the Latino community. This video is an example of a positive response to such tragedy. I wonder what opportunities there are for us to create other informative videos for our community? What other organizations could we partner with in such an effort?

L & P #20

Ooops! Somehow I managed to skip two Learn and Play exercises! Allow me to backtrack...thing #20 is on You Tube. You Tube is definitely rad. I use it a lot to find sweet kickboxing matches, especially female fighters as they are not usually on TV. I also like looking up concert footage and music videos.

However, I am going to embark on some shameless self-promotion here to demonstrate embedding video content into a blog. Enjoy!