Dream Program: Live Stream the ALA Youth Media Awards

As you probably already know, yesterday the American Library Association announced the winners of the Youth Media Awards, a group that includes the prestigious Newbery, Caldecott, and Printz medals. Lots of us were tuned to the livestreaming free webcast of the awards announcements, whether we were at home  or at work.  I was at home and didn't tune into the webcast, but I was following the Twitter stream at #alayma closely.

A program I would love to do would be to implement a Mock Awards process and then live stream the Awards announcement for any patrons who wished to view them. I'm not guaranteeing huge numbers for this as the Awards are given out early on Monday morning while most of us are at work, but it wouldn't necessarily be that hard or expensive to put together. And what fun to celebrate them as they happen with people who participated in a Mock Caldecott or Newbery vote! You could also show the finished video of the awards after school or that evening to better accommodate schedules.

Does anyone do this already? I'd be curious to hear your experiences. I love the mental image of someone happening to come into my library where a huge screen was showing librarians love-bombing children's literature. It would be great for ALA/ALSC to encourage this kind of grassroots support for their best known awards. 

Comments

  1. This is a great idea! Couldn't happen on the west coast (unless 5-8am sounds like a good time to our patrons), but if they saved the live recording (do they? I don't even know!) it would be fun to do it in the evening. Have a whole Oscar style party, inviting people to dress up, etc. Cider champagne to celebrate the winners, little medals to give any Mock winners who win for real. Maybe kids could "present" the mock titles like they do IRL? The possibilities are endless!

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  2. They do indeed save the recording. I watched part of it this morning. :)

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  3. We watched as a staff this year and I'm contemplating doing a Mock Caldecott and/or Mock Newbery with the homeschoolers next year and inviting them to tune in. This year, I made Award Winners our theme for our January homeschooler program and passed out flyers with the webcast address, so possibly some of them tuned in? But I have no way of knowing unless they come in and let me know!

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