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The Buzz from IRA

May 15, 2007

No, not your Uncle Ira. I'm talking about the International Reading Association's Annual Convention in Toronto. I guess this year, with the theme "Literacy Without Boundaries," IRA was really trying to put the "I" in IRA by heading to Canada. This cut attendance to less than half of the 20,000 that typically show up; lots of U.S. teachers just can't get funding to go out of the country. Which is too bad, since Toronto, which feels so uniquely international, was the perfect venue. Amazingly, you can attend IRA and spend the whole time in programs held only in Spanish or French.

Canadians were glad to have the convention on home turf, and not completely dominated by the concerns of U.S. educators and their relationship with No Child Left Behind legislation. Some griped, however, that they had to pay in U.S. currency to attend a conference in their own country.

If you are a librarian IRA can be a strange but fascinating experience. First off, if you take off your glasses, you would think you were at ALA. Lots of the same publishers, same tote bags. Plenty of comfortable shoes. But open your ears, and you'll hear about many of the same books, but talked about in very different ways. They're like our cousins, familiar but different.

One difference is that at ALA, we all divide up into our divisions and subgroups. This doesn't happen as much at IRA, and you can easily find yourself at a program that several thousand other people find interesting. Major traffic jams!

The best part of IRA is that there is all this research being presented that relates to what librarians do, we just don't develop the data, or have the framework, to explain the impact of our services. Case in point: graphic novels. We know it appeals to struggling readers, and many librarians believe that it helps improve literacy. But at IRA, you can meet researchers who are examining exactly these questions. That's the main reason SLJ staff goes to IRA: to seek out the content you need to hear about..and convince people to write for us.

The hottest topic? Sen. Kennedy's report--released right before the conference started--on the financial ties between publishers and the officials who implemented the Reading First program.

The big themes? The young adult reader (that's another difference between IRA and us, they look more at the reader, we look more at the content), especially the young adult who is acquiring a new language. And multiple literacies: print, digital, visual, auditory.

The perfect school or youth librarian would do it all: ALA, IRA, the National Educational Computing Conference, and probably three more events. Of course if you did all that you'd end up broke and probably out of a job.

Posted by Brian Kenney on May 15, 2007 | Comments (7)