“Join the © Team” is a free program that helps students in grades K-5 understand and appreciate the value of copyright and the concept of intellectual property. The downloadable curriculum materials provide students with hands-on activities and worksheets to expand their creative arts, research and communication skills. The program teaches students respect for intellectual property through the creation of their own copyrighted works, and offers them guidance and tips on avoiding plagiarism.  Visit www.jointhecteam.com.

ABC-CLIO Leadership Grant—Sponsored by ABC-CLIO
Established in 1986, the grant of up to $1,750 is given to school library media associations that are AASL affiliates for planning and implementing leadership programs at the state, regional, or local levels. Applications for the 2010 AASL Awards season are now available here. Deadline February 1, 2010. 

Gale, part of Cengage Learning, today announced the launch of the AccessMyLibrary (AML) mobile application for the iPhone – making access to library research just a click away on a mobile phone. AccessMyLibrary, a library advocacy program, is a major portal from the Internet to libraries, allowing Web searchers to find what they need by connecting them to their local library. The Gale iPhone application can be downloaded at the iTunes store. AccessMyLibrary, Gale’s platform for library discovery, can also be accessed at any time from any computer through the internet at www.accessmylibrary.com.

The Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS)
invites nominations for the 2010 Coming Up Taller awards, which honor excellence in afterschool, out-of-school, and summer arts and humanities programs for underserved children and youth. Coming Up Taller is an initiative of the President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities (PCAH) in partnership with IMLS, the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), and the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). Deadline:  January 29, 2010. Find the nomination form here.

As part of a collaborative public media initiative, PBS Teachers (pbsteachers.org) has developed Access, Analyze, Act: From Economic Theory to Financial Reality, a special collection of educational digital media resources about the economy for use in school and home learning environments. PBS Teachers is the Web portal to PBS’s preK-12 educational services and a searchable library of more than 9,000 free local and national standards-based instructional resources, including on-demand video, lesson plans, classroom activities, and interactive games.

The U.S. Department of Education, Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP) just awarded Bookshare (www.bookshare.org) $100K in supplemental funding to create the first accessible open content digital textbooks in math and science for grades 9-12. These open content textbooks have already been reviewed and approved for standards alignment for CA students by the California Learning Resource Network (CLRN). The open content accessible textbooks will be freely distributed by Bookshare for anyone seeking textbooks in accessible formats with or without proof of disability under a creative commons license selected by the authors.

Longtime reviewer Tena Litherland is a member of the YALSA committee that will award the 2010 Excellence in Nonfiction for Young Adults award, which honors the best nonfiction books written for young adults between Nov. 1, 2008 and Oct. 31, 2009. The first award will be announced at the 2010 ALA Midwinter conference. In addition to her reviewing, this is another way that Tena contributes to our profession.