NCAA March Madness!  No, Really.

As I take in the thrill of watching Yale have a near comeback against Duke and how Duke's loss might break yet another bracket in the craziness that is men's basketball in March, I can't help but notice that of the 38 people who filled out the sheet in a small, friendly pool, 27 of them picked done-in-the-first-round Michigan State to go all the way.  Michigan State does not even boast a number 1 seed (number 2, but still).  I suspect that none of the Northern Michigan locals--among them a State grad or State dad or State grandpa--could imagine the Spartans taking the title without each of them being a part of it.  It's cute, really.  Such loyalty.  I picked North Carolina.  And I'm still smiling.

On the shelves the madness is also in full swing.  Our high school (men and women) has had great success in post season basketball play the past few state tournament runs.  Because of that and the NCAA propagating every digital feed going in and out of mainstream media, it becomes a real challenge to fill all the requests this time of year.  I walked the stacks Friday morning searching to find a basketball book for a student.  Just one.  He's a brand new fan of basketball fiction, and after discovering The Crossover by Kwame Alexander about a month ago, he can't get enough.

Rucker Park Setup?  Read it.

Black and White?  Checked out.

On a Devil's Court?  Read it.

Foul Trouble?  Checked out.


At this point, I start to feel that I already know how this is going to end:  our combined disappointment.  After feeling guilty that I just haven't stocked the shelves well enough and my recommendation that soccer is right around the corner, I offer up the questions:  What's your second favorite sport?   I've got the new Ronaldo biography?  How about baseball?

There are, simply, times in the year when this lack-of-good-stock phenomenon happens:  Halloween (ghosts, horror, mystery, sorcery); sports' seasons (baseball, soccer, football, basketball); winter (Dickens, celebrations around the world, hockey); recent movie releases (Room by Emma Donoghue, The Martian by Andy Weir, The Big Short by Michael Lewis); and a great assignment on the Harlem Renaissance (Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen, Jazz, Jacob Laurence, Zora Neale Hurston, Palmer Hayden, Claude McKay).

So, I take a look at the catalog to see what I really have left on basketball.  Not much. I scroll through all the many borrowed books.  Is the value of a collection based on what's available or what's checked out?  On quick glance, I have about 120 total basketball books checked out of the library, with only 158 individual titles.  Mind you, I have multiple copies of some books (4 copies of The Crossover (Alexander), 3 copies of Game (Myers), 5 copes of Rucker Park Setup (Volponi), 4 copies of  Swagger (Deuker),  5 copies of Slam Kicks:  Basketball Sneakers That Changed the Game (Osborne), etc...  I deduce that there are a lot of really good (and some just plain entertaining) books in the hands of our high school students--no need for guilt.


Some Books Currently OFF the Shelf in March 2016:

The Crossover by Kwame Alexander

On The Devil's Court by Carl Deuker

Foul Trouble by John Feinstein

The Last Great Game:  Duke Vs Kentucky and the 2.1 Seconds That Changed Basketball by Gene Wojchechowski

Swagger by Carl Deuker

A Father First:  How My Life Became Bigger Than Basketball by Dwyane Wade

Slam Kicks:  Basketball Sneakers that Changed the Game by Ben Osborne

Don't Let the Lipstick Fool You by Lisa Leslie

Rucker Park Setup by Paul Volponi

Fast Break to Line Break:  Poets on the Art of Basketball edited by Todd Davis

Lay Ups ad Long Shots by Josheph Bruschac. . . [et. al.].

The Art of a Beautiful Game:  A Thinking Fan's Tour of the NBA by Christ Ballard

Travel Team by Mike Lupica

The Rhythm Boys of Omaha Central:  High School Basketball at the '68 Racial Divide by Steve Marantz

Dream Team:  How Michael, Magic, Larry, Charles and the Greatest Team of All Time Changed the Game of Basketball Forever by Jack McCallum

An Illustrated History of Duke Basketball by Bill Brill

Lebron James:  Champion Basketball Star by Valerie Bodden

Michigan State Spartans by Chris Roselius

Ball Don't Lie by Matt de la Pena

Sacred Hoops:  Spiritual Lessons of a Hardwood Warrior by Phil Jackson

The Perfect Shot by Elaine Alphin

Tilt by Alan Cumyn

Game by Walter Dean Myers

True Legend by Mike Lupica

Overtime Kids:  The Untold Story of a Small Kentucky Basketball Team's Unlikely Rise to the State Championship by Don Miller

Basketball:  Science Behind Sports by Diane Yancey

The Best NBA Forwards of All Time by Patrick Donnelly

Send An Email, You Say?

There are many expectations we place upon digital natives.  From the outside looking in, it appears all young people should just know how to do everything when it comes to technology.  After all, they've had digital overload in their lives since birth.  This generation can navigate through their cell phones and download the latest and greatest new app like they are wired for such tasks.  Snapchat, Facebook, Twitter and even Instant Messaging have become so commonplace, that I’m sure I sound old suggesting that these apps might still be relevant to a person under the age of twenty.  Surely, in the time it takes me to write this, ten more apps will hit the cyber highway straight to a tablet near you.  So, it seems almost impossible that our high school students would have missed one of the basic functions of attaching a document to an email and sending it along to a teacher or a potential employer.  Impossible it is not.  It is an absolute fact.

When we think about it, though, this really isn’t that strange.  Electronic mail (email) didn’t surface until about 1993, and it really didn’t hit mainstream America for another decade.  This generation of high school students would have been in their infancy when email was the in thing for instant communication.  Oh, the times they have changed! Now, the in thing is so in, that most of us over the age of forty likely don't even know what it is.  One absolute that never changes, though, is that teenagers like to be in the lead when it comes to having what's new--the latest and greatest.  It stands to reason, therefore, that the way people communicated electronically in 2003 is not going to be the most savvy way to communicate in 2016.

It is not surprising, then, that many of the invisible tasks librarians do today is to connect the youngest patrons with our old school ways of doing things, so that they can communicate with multiple generations of users.  Don’t get me wrong, I love seeing students embrace such tools as Google Drive or Drop Box to house documents and easily retrieve them from any computer, smart phone or tablet; alas, who is taking them back two steps to navigate the skills they need to engage with people outside their peer group?  It is not an exaggeration to say that a half dozen times per week I am showing my high school students how to attach documents to emails to send to their teachers, college admissions offices or potential employers.  In fact, about once a month, I have a reason to, first explain what it is, then show students how to send a facsimile.  (Can you say 1970s?) Although there are more efficient, cutting-edge technologies to expedite these tasks, we will always need people who can show students how to bridge the generations together to make sure no one gets lost in this ever-changing, digitally-driven world of communication.

Because she's read all of the books?

During a farewell celebration from a previous job, an elementary student was asked why he thought I was leaving that school library.  His response: "Because she's read all of the books?"

Well, I had read a lot of them, but certainly not all!  My colleague's great post about recommending books got me thinking about one of the things we do that we often take for granted.  Read.  We can't recommend great books until we've read them, and reading takes time.  Sure, we also read a lot of book reviews which can help, but reading a review of a book is not the same as reading the actual book. I have, on more than one occasion, read a book because of its excellent review but upon reading it myself, found it to be much-less-than-excellent or not appropriate for the grade levels the review suggested.  It's always sad when that happens, but reminds me that there is no substitute for reading it myself.

I have also read many great children's books that were not my personal favorites.  Genres that were not my personal favorites.  That is our job too.  Not only reading what we love, but making sure we read what our students and teachers might love, even if it isn't our cup of tea.  We have to be self-aware enough to put our own likes and dislikes aside and evaluate a book for its overall quality and merit.  It might just be exactly the perfect book for one of our students!

Reading that widely takes time.  Teacher days are so packed that they can rarely fit in time to keep current on all of the new books coming out. It's our job to read as much as we can on their behalf, and on the behalf of our students, so that we can connect them with the books that meet their curriculum needs or that we know they will love.