From MSLMA to MSLA
Kathy Lowe, MSLA President
The votes are in!
30% of our members voted on the proposal to change the name of our organization from MSLMA (Massachusetts School Library Media Association) to MSLA (Massachusetts School Library Association)..
Of the 231 members who cast votes, only 9 voted "No", so the vote was undeniably conclusive.
Now we will begin the process of legally changing our organization's name. We will phase out the MSLMA name, changing to MSLA on our documents and publications as new ones are produced. More information on all of this will come later, but in the meantime, we can start practicing saying, typing and using our new name. At our conference in October, we will unveil a new logo and web site design to go along with our new name and the updated image we intend to project.
Thank you to the members who participated in the online discussion and/or vote for ushering our association into a new era!
MSLA Awards
Laurie Belanger, Awards Co-chair
I am looking forward to the annual MSLA conference October 29th: looking forward to seeing friends and making new ones, hearing and sharing great ideas, shopping with the vendors, and giving some special applicants Awards and Scholarships! It is my privilege to be a co-chair member of the MSLA Awards Committee and I would love to give you recognition and financial support for what you incredibly talented librarians (and soon to be librarians) do every day. Please look through the following link and submit an application for the many types of awards and scholarships listed on our MSLA web pages!
Awards link: www.mslma.org/whoweare/awards/awards.html
Letters About Literature
Sharon Shaloo, Executive Director, Massachusetts Center for the Book
Letters About Literature (LAL) asks students in Grades 4 through 12 to write letters to authors whose work has made a significant difference in their lives. It invites personal and reflective writing about reading, and is a wonderful complement to less formal journaling and more formal critical essays -- occupying that middle ground where kids have a chance to express how and why they have made a personal connection with a book they have read.
LAL is sponsored in Massachusetts by the Massachusetts Center for the Book, with funding from the Calderwood Writing Initiative at the Boston Athenaeum, and is a project that feeds into the national program which is run by the Library of Congress with funding from Target. National winners (Massachusetts had one two years ago) are brought to DC to read their letters on the Mall during the National Book Festival. We run the program from our Boston office at Simmons College GSLIS.
The Entry Form/Guidelines are now posted at the Mass Center for the Book web site: www.massbook.org. We have put a direct link to the guidelines on our homepage. You can click into the "Letters About Literature" section to find other information in our "Teaching Resources" section, and you can see sample letters at our award winners pages.
A mailing is being prepared that will be addressed to school principals in all Massachusetts schools that encompass Grades 4 through 12. Please ask your school office to direct that packet to you or to your English/Language Arts head.
We have additional hard copies of the entry guidelines in our office and if you want additional copies, please contact us in the Boston office.
I hope you will sponsor LAL this year. It's a great program -- and to give you a flavor of the awards event -- click on the photo gallery for the 2006 program.
