Tags Justin Hoenke

67 posts

Excellence in Library Services to Young Adults 2012 (by TTW contributor Justin Hoenke)

I’m very honored to be part of this years President’s Program Planning Task Force for YALSA.  As part of this program, we’re announcing this years Excellence in Library Services to Young Adults program which you can find out about below.  If you’re a teen program who’s doing awesome things, I highly suggest you think about being part of this program.  There’s a lot of great teen programs out there right now being put on by hard working librarians and this is your chance to share them with everyone! From ALA.org: YALSA will select up to twenty-five innovative teen programs from all types of libraries […]

Expanding The Conversation (by TTW contributor Justin Hoenke)

Have you ever found yourself inside the library echo chamber? I think we all have.  You’ve got something great to share or say about libraries and you put it out there…and it’s only talked about by librarians and libraries.  Some great presentations and pieces have been written about the echo chamber (some of my  faves are from Ned Potter, Sally Pewhairangi, and Steven V. Kaszynski).    These have got me thinking…how can we avoid the echo chamber?  My thought is this…expand the conversation and try, try, try your best to include those outside of the library world.  But how can we […]

Librarians Around The City (by TTW contributor Justin Hoenke)

On a recent break from work at my library, I walked down to the local cafe to get my daily summer iced tea and lemonade.  On my walk back to the library, I noticed a couple looking at a large map of Portland, ME.  They looked like they were trying to find something but couldn’t figure out where to go.  I stepped in and said, “Is there something I can help you find?  I live downtown and I’m also a librarian.  It’s part of my job to help people find what they need.” In the end, I helped the couple […]

Librarian Identity (by TTW Contributor Justin Hoenke)

Early in my career, I made the mistake of mentioning in one of my one of my presentations that I was one of those librarians that didn’t read a lot but somehow got into libraries.  Since then, I don’t think I’ve been able to live that down.  To some, I’ve become “ that teen librarian  who doesn’t read” and to some extent I think that’s hurt me.  I was wrong in saying that I don’t read.  In fact, I read quite a bit: I read the most on my phone (news, gaming, music, sports, RSS feeds) I play video games, […]

German-American Gaming League (by TTW Contributor Justin Hoenke)

I had the honor of helping unveil the German-American Gaming League while I was in Hamburg last month for the Bibliothekartag Library Conference.  If you’re interested in the league, please visit this link for more information (please note: the page is in German, so have Google Translate handy!) What is the German-American gaming league? In the gaming league take people from Germany and the United States in an open competition against each other. Here are several computer games such as Wii bowling and playing Mario Kart. Why did the German-American gaming league? We believe that gaming will have a major impact on […]

King Middle School Expedition Learning TV

At the request of the students, our class embarked on a geography themed expedition this year to study the beauty and mystery of this huge country. All the students in our class are new to the US. After researching they have became experts on one of the US Census regions. In addition, they developed a practical understanding of how the world is categorized into the 5 themes of geography.  –Catherine Paul  I wanted to share this awesome project some of the teens who use my library just did at their school.  They came into the library today and were really […]

Exchanging business cards for library cards at the Portland Business Expo

The Portland Regional Chamber held its annual business expo on Wednesday, and booths included the usual: credit unions, hotels, sign shops, telecom companies, the Portland Public Library. Attendance was light in the early afternoon, but began to pick up as …. — “Wait!” I know you’re all saying, astonished: “The Portland Public Library???!!” Sonya Durney, who is the Business and Government Librarian at my library just recently did something super awesome.  She took her show on the road the Portland Business Expo and talked to local small businesses about the benefits of using their local library. Durney explained: “If we can […]

Please consider supporting the Young Writers & Leaders Film

The Young Writers and Leaders film is part of a Telling Room program, Sonya Tomlinson, David Meiklejohn, and 15 Portland, Maine area teens (all of whom use my teen library everyday!). Simply stated, the film tells the stories of the teens and their involvement in the Telling Room program and their lives in Portland, ME. Their goal is to take their film and the fifteen teen participants on a trip to Boston and  spend the day in the city visiting a sister writing center, pairing up with Boston-area young writers, and holding a screening of the film in a  film house […]