Wednesday, March 18, 2026

UCM’s Graduate Student Achievement Award



I am the appreciative recipient of a Graduate Student Achievement Award, as selected for 2025-2026 at the University of Central Missouri. With this video, I want to express my gratitude.
https://youtu.be/X_OvPf08_98

Book-Talk: Wish I Was a Baller by Amar Shah



I’d recommend this graphic-format memoir to a variety of young readers: especially kids who love sports, who aspire to careers in journalism, maybe even to kids who combine both interests.
https://youtu.be/7fSr8qYfONg

H.R. 7661: Truly disturbing and frightening!



As a follow-up to the essay I posted earlier, here is a brief video I uploaded today about H.R. 7661. Introduced in late February by U.S. Rep. Mary E. Miller, H.R. 7661 defines “sexually oriented material” to include any material that involves “gender dysphoria or transgenderism.” It’s truly disturbing and, in the words of Sam Helmick, current president of the American Library Association: “H.R. 7661 isn’t fundamentally about protecting kids. It’s about giving politicians broad authority to restrict whose stories are allowed on our shelves.”
https://youtu.be/UbDjU8uh7Jk

Saturday, March 14, 2026

Materials selection for a diverse library collection

Building and promoting a diverse library collection begins with materials selection. In an earlier writing I talked about the fact that communities served by libraries are increasingly diverse. “Race, ethnicity, language, physical and mental ability, socioeconomic status, gender expression, and sexual orientation are just a few ways diversity is reflected in [students’] lived experiences” (Hughes-Hassell, 2020, p. 21). My goal when building a library collection is to serve this increasingly diverse community by ensuring variety among the books in the library’s collection.