Welcome to Alliance Library System's Youth Services Resources pages! The goal of these pages is to offer ALS member librarians and librarians across Illinois easy access to resources, ideas, and programming information to implement and improve public and school library services and summer reading programs.

General Resources

Children's Library
http://en.childrenslibrary.org
This website includes 3,169 online books in 49 languages, available to children everywhere. The organization's mission is to "suppor the world's children in becoming effective members of the global community - who exhibit tolerance and respect for diverse cultures, languages and ideas--by making the best in children's literature available online free of charge." Through this site, the project intends to help children who have left their homelands continue to have the opportunity to experience great literature.

Copyright with Cyberbee
http://cyberbee.com/cb_copyright.swf
A simple interactive question and answer lesson that is great for elementary students.

FactHound
www.facthound.com
FactHound is an innovative new Web portal designed to provide students with the most accurate and current resources available on the Internet. Students can visit this website and search by book ID number, title, keyword, or ISBN for additional information. FactHound will fetch a list of approved and recommended web sites matching the search criteria.

Kid's Click
http://www.kidsclick.org
An excellent resource created by librarians and meant to guide children to age appropriate site on a number of different topics. There is a fun feature on the bottom of the page that allows you to see the content through the "eyes of a librarian." Instead of seeing the topics listed, you get to see the Dewey classificiation.

Libraries and Autism: We're Connected
http://www.thejointlibrary.org/autism/index.htm
Two New Jersey libraries produced a customer service training video primarily for library staff to help them serve individuals with autism and their families more effectively. The video and website resources focus on what librarians need to know about autism and will empower them with specific techniques to offer more inclusive service to this growing and underserved population.

Military Familes @ Your Library
http://militaryfamilies.wetpaint.com/
This website was created by the Illinois Youth Services Consultants and provides information to librarians for providing services to military families.

Purdue Online Writing Lab (OWL)
http://owl.english.purdue.edu
This is an excellent resource for research and writing tips. This site would be most relevant for high school librarians.

Resources for School Librarians
http://www.sldirectory.com
This website provides links to online resources for school librarians under the topics of Learning and Teaching, Information Access, Program Administration, Technology, Education and Employment, and Continuing Education. It also has a search tool for finding information by keywords. The site is maintained by a retired school librarian.

Story Hour Ideas
http://midhudson.org/program/ideas/Story_Hour.htm
Theme- and book-based ideas, crafts, music, fingerplays/rhymes, and more resources from the Mid-Hudson Library System. Be sure to check out their Youth Services page, as well.

Story Line
http://www.storylineonline.net/index2.html
Storyline Online is a site by the Screen Actors Guild which features celebrities reading children's books. Nothing like Al Gore reading, "Brave Irene." Great for independent choice reading centers or whole classes.

SUNLINK Weed of the Month
http://www.sunlink.ucf.edu/weed
An amazing website funded by the Florida Department of Education and hosted by the College of Education at the University of Central Florida. Topics are sorted out by Dewey classification numbers. Select a topic and read over why you should weed this section, a list of suggested Dewey numbers you should check, specific criteria for weeding this section and suggested titles that you would weed.

Thinkfinity.org
http://www.thinkfinity.org
Thinkfinity.org makes it easy for educators to enhance their classroom instruction with lesson plans, interactive activities and other online resources. Thinkfinity.org also provides a wealth of educational and literacy resources for students, parents and after-school programs. All of Thinkfinity.org's 55,000 standards-based K-12 lesson plans, student materials, interactive tools and reference materials are reviewed by the nation's leading education organizations to ensure that content is accurate, up-to-date, unbiased and appropriate for students. At Thinkfinity.org, you'll find primary source materials, interactive student resources and grade-specific research lists to help you tailor materials to meet your needs.