Once relegated to the outlier realm of children’s entertainment, comic books and graphic novels have evolved to completely dominate pop culture, spinning off into TV shows, movie franchises and video games. New comic book titles increasingly deal with complex themes and appeal exclusively to adult audiences while the older, tried and true superheroes of yesterday have gotten 21st century makeovers.
Tag Archives: American Library Association
ALA San Francisco Recap
The 2015 ALA annual conference #alaaac15 has come and gone and it was another memorable one for the books – literally and figuratively. If you have ever experienced this conference before, you know that some of the battle is getting back home without picking up too many Advanced Readers Copies of books. For bibliomaniacs everywhere, the struggle is real. I try to resist, having purposefully packed only a small carry-on, yet alas ended up shipping 2 boxes of books back anyway. Yay, books!
I was fortunate to be able to garner support and go to the annual conference this year, only having a few months under my belt as Children’s Services Consultant at the Indiana State Library. With a new city to navigate and different sessions from which to learn, it’s definitely a whirlwind and one you have to plan ahead of time. The ALA conference website has a nice online scheduler to assist you with jam-packing your days with high-conflict/high-priority sessions. Whee! Most times, though you’ve planned, you still roll with the punches – seeing how you feel (“I need coffee!”) and where you are actually located to see if it’s feasible to attend the session you wished. And, of course, you HAVE to compare your session times against all the great author signings in the exhibit halls.
Time for Adventure @ The Library
We’re all familiar with the adventures we take when reading a great piece of fiction from our local library. But what if the library could inspire an actual physical adventure? A real, live treasure hunt unlike anything you’ve ever experienced before?
Guess what? It can!
Libraries all over Indiana have known for years about a sport called geocaching (pronounced gee-oh-cashing). The Indiana Department of Natural Resources has a geocaching website to explain what it is and how to use it in Indiana parks. Geocaching can be done anywhere on the globe, but it needs to be organized first. Once you’ve decided what group you’d like to geocache with, you’re in for an adventure!
In 2013, the American Library Association’s magazine published a story called Libraries “Cache” in on Geocaching Treasure Hunts. It featured New York’s Liverpool Public Library and its summer programming that included all sorts of fun geocaching activities.
If you want to know more about this new sport, or about other libraries in Indiana which have already incorporated geocaching into their programming, look below!
- A Modern Day Treasure Hunt Indiana Insider Blog
- Geocaching at the Libraries Lake County Public Library
- Geocaching at Jasper County Public Library
- Geocaching: How to get started REI