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All who attended the conference will receive an evaluation link by the end of this week. We highly value your thoughts and feedback as we reflect on the event and look towards improving future experiences. Your insights are invaluable to us and will play a crucial role in shaping our 2026 Conference.
Conference By the Numbers
1 Innovation Showcase
1 Librarian's Dance
1 Meet Your Officers Reception
1 New Member & First Time Attendee Social
1 Offsite Tour to RAFT
1 Unconference
2 Keynote Speakers: John Schu and Mychal Threets
4 Wellness activities
5 Author Panels
10 Conference Sponsors
12 Exhibitor Learning Sessions
16 Workshops
20 Lightening Sessions
30 Conference Committee Members
37 Meetups
27 authors (pictured below)
50 Concurrent Sessions
61 Exhibitor Tables
100+ Volunteers who worked the registration counter, staffed the Hospitality Table, and served as session facilitators
152 Community Bulletin Board posts
410 Photos Uploaded to Whova
507 Attendees at the California Young Reader Medal Banquet, featuring the Young Adult category winner for I'm Not Dying With You Tonight, with a recorded message from Gilly Segal and a rousing in-person address by Kimberly Jones
Whova personal Agendas made
662 People attended (attendees and exhibitors)
$2,600 raised for the the California School Library Foundation
6,943 message sent on the Whova app
A profound thank you to everyone who contributed to the event's success. We truly appreciate your support. -Janice Gilmore, conference coordinator
A Special Thank You to Our Conference Committee!
Janice Gilmore, conference coordinator
Melissa Misenhimer, administrative assistant
Sue Heraper, exhibitor coordinator
Renee Hohls, president and conference co-lead/keynote speakers
Aimee Kortyna, president-elect and conference co-lead
Ashlee Nishiya, proposal/presentation coordinator
Alan Adler
Dan Alvarado
Kate Applebee
Amanda Garza
Rosan Cable
Tammie Celi
Ellie Goldstein-Erickson
Dr. Virginia Loh-Hagan
Rene Hohls
Mia Gittlen
Heather Gruenthal
Kay Hones
Jonathan Hunt
Nina Jackson
Sasha Kinney
Terry Lai
Aimee Korynta
Mitzie Larson
Amy Linden
Nancy Lucero
Deb Palmer
Laura Rose
Jenn Roush
Kate Williams
2025 CSLA Awards
Congratulations to all award winners and scholarship recipients this year! Awards and scholarships will open in September 2025 to be awarded at the 2026 annual conference.
Advocate for School Libraries
The Advocate for School Libraries Award honors a person or group (not currently employed in the school library) who has advocated for school libraries within the past year.
Recipient: Kirsten Saint, Director of Elementary Instruction, Ceres Unified School District
Nominated by Claudette Lee, TK-6 District Librarian
Administrative Leadership
The Advocate for School Libraries Award honors a person or group (not currently employed in the school library) who has advocated for school libraries within the past year.
Recipient: Matt Best, Superintendent Davis Joint Unified School District
Nominated by Chris Fluetsch, Elementary Teacher-Librarian
Technology Award
The Technology Award honors a teacher librarian who uses technology as a tool for learning and collaborates to promote the integration of technology in the curriculum. Sponsored by Mackin.
Recipient: Ali Lauer, Teacher-Librarian at Griffith STEAM Magnet Middle School
Honorary Membership
The Honorary Membership Award recognizes retired CSLA members who have made outstanding contributions to school library programs and the association over a sustained period of time. Honorary Member recipients are members who have tirelessly shared time, effort, and skills to improve the association and library services. These recipients receive complimentary lifetime membership to CSLA. Recipients also receive free registration for the 2025 CSLA Annual Conference.
Recipient: Lesley Farmer, retired professor at CSU Long Beach and Teacher Librarianship program coordinator
Leadership for Diversity Teacher Librarian Scholarship
Librarian Scholarship will be awarded to a teacher librarian who is from a traditionally underrepresented group and
enrolled in an accredited teacher librarian credential program.
Retired: Kirti Baranwal, Teacher-Librarian William Jefferson Clinton Middle School, Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD)
CSLF Rosemarie Biernier
In remembrance of Rosemarie Bernier, California School Library Foundation (CSLF) is offering a $1500 scholarship to a student who is pursuing a Teacher Librarian Services credential.
Recipient: Kirti Baranwal, Teacher-Librarian William Jefferson Clinton Middle School, LAUSD (pictured above)
Southern Region Teacher Librarian Services Credential Scholarship
The Southern Region Teacher Librarian Services Credential Scholarship is for anyone seeking preparation leading toward a degree or credential that will qualify the individual to work as a professional in the school library field in a school setting.
Scholarship amount: $2500.
Recipient: Danielle Murr-Pinsker, Teacher-Librarian La Cañada High School
Southern Region Classified Scholarship
The Southern Region Classified Scholarship is CSLA member to receive $1000 toward attending the 2025 CSLA Annual Conference in San Jose, California.
Recipient: Miranda Lara, Library Specialist at Fontana Unified School District
Northern Region Jewel Gardner Scholarship
The purpose of the Northern Jewel Gardner Scholarship is to assist those persons who are currently enrolled in a Teacher Librarian Credential Program OR a Classified Certificate program OR library staff who want to attend the annual conference. The purpose of the scholarship is to assist with concurrently enrolled courses or attendance to the CSLA Conference. Complete only one application. Winners will be selected from the eligible applications received.
Recipient: Rebecca Snow, District Librarian at Ceres Unified School District
Earlene Billing First-Time Grant
The Earlene Billing First-Timer Grant awards $350 for a credentialed or classified member to attend the CSLA Conference for the first time.
Recipients: Farima Farokhi, Teacher-Librarian at Ventura High School (left) and Abby Gratzer-Owens, Library Technician at Woodland Library (right)
I Love My Classified Staff
The I Love My Classified Library Staff Award recognizes a person who has made a positive impact for at least three years in a school library in a classified position.
Southern Region
Recipient: Fabi Perez (pictured left, center), school library media technician at Sycamore Junior High in Anaheim
Northern Region
Recipient: Shayla Davis (pictured right, center), community library specialist at Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Academy in the Sausalito Marin City School District
Thank You to Our Conference Sponsors!
Legislative Update
February 2025
Prepared by Lisa Cheby, VP of Government Relations
This past year CSLA Government Relations Committee updated and reaffirmed our Legislative Priorities.
Intellectual Freedom Committee
Thank you to Fran Prather, teacher librarian, who has led the Intellectual Freedom Committee the past year and a half, overseeing the creation of our Book Challenge Toolkit with the California State Library. She has answered many questions and concerns from librarians facing challenges and laid groundwork for a follow up to the Book Challenge Toolkit. Our current toolkit focuses on preemptive work and the new toolkit will focus on what to do in real time if a book is challenged. This work will involve building partnerships with county offices of education and other library professionals to create a network of support for schools, school boards, and librarians to protect intellectual freedom in California.
New Advocacy Committee
We have recently created an advocacy committee. We are seeking leadership for this committee to focus on supporting local school library advocates through training, creating tools for advocacy, and listening. This committee will customize actions based on local needs and issues. The leaders of this committee will report to the VP of Government Relations to ensure our legislative work includes concerns of our members and school libraries. We have tools and support from ALA, CSLA, and other partner organizations, but we need local and aspiring leaders to work with us. We cannot do it all from Sacramento and we are all stronger together.
California Bills
From 2022-2024, we saw several bills related to information literacy pass the legislature. AB1078, for which CSLA wrote a letter of support and letters of thanks, safeguards the right to an accurate and inclusive curriculum.
Assemblymember Berman’s bills AB 873 and AB2876 require the Model School Library Standards (MSLS) be incorporated into new frameworks to ensure that media literacy and AI literacy, respectively, are addressed in the core curriculum.
This year, we leverage these wins into AB279 from Assemblymember Patel. This bill proposes an update of the MSLS by 2028. Half of this committee must be credentialed teacher librarians.
We continue to seek an author for our Library Lead bill.
Finally, we continue to work with a coalition of groups such as the California Teachers Association (CTA), the California Association for Bilingual Educators (CABE), and Californians Together to ensure that any literacy bill has the language of current evidence-based practices and needs in education. CSLA Lobbyist Jeff Frost and VP of Communications team member Sasha Kinney will present the role of school libraries in literacy at a briefing in Sacramento late this month.
EveryLibrary Campaign
We will soon be launching a campaign with EveryLibrary to advocate for school libraries in California. This campaign will include a letter writing campaign to support our bills. Stay tune!
Emergency Preparedness in Libraries
In light of the recent disaster events that have affected school libraries, here are resources to help you prepare for emergencies, including possible disasters:
IN ADDITION, the California School Library Foundation is establishing a disaster fund to support school libraries that have been significantly impacted by a disaster (e.g., fire, flood, earthquake). The more donations that the foundation receives, the more school libraries can be funded. Watch for details.
We all know students are using GenAI tools like ChatGPT and Google Gemini. But how can educators support students to fact-check the chatbot? Join us for a 1-hour workshop designed to help students gain vital online research and reasoning skills in the age of AI. You'll learn how professional fact checkers avoid falling for misinformation, whether it’s human- or AI-generated, and practice identifying and evaluating credible sources. Then we’ll put what you’ve learned to the test with the latest version of our favorite source-checking game: Share or Beware! You’ll leave with ideas, teaching tips and ready-to-use resources to help students find reliable sources no matter where they click.
As VP of the California Student Media Festival (CSMF) and CSLA Honorary Member, I invite you to participate in the CSMF. This event is free for TK-12 students to enter, and free to attend. Any student media creation may be entered between Jan. 20, 2025, and April 1, 2025; the festival will be held on May 17 in person at Hollywood High School. The festival is entirely volunteer-run and is also seeking judges to help support the celebration of student creativity.
About
Now in its 58th year, the CSMF is our nation’s oldest student media festival. Over the past twenty-five years, CSMF has awarded more than $175,000 to California Schools. It has expanded to include the work of more than 6,000 student contestants from schools across the state. The festival exists to celebrate the amazing media and multimedia projects produced by California’s students and teachers — rewarding and acknowledging their successful classroom work at an awards event in spring every year.
As a recently retired teacher librarian professor at CSULB and now the Festival’s VP, I can attest to the importance of media literacy education — and the impact that the festival has on students and adult participants. I strongly encourage our CSLA members to promote participation in the festival by exploring the CSMF website, publicizing the event, supporting student media projects and entrance to the festival, helping at the festival event, and judging the student entries.
CSLA helped found CSMF. This year, CSLA donated $3,000 for the festival, sponsoring awards for videos that demonstrate strong media and information literacy. The California School Library Foundation donated $500 for an award for the best video that celebrates school libraries. Let’s keep CSLA and school libraries a vital part of CSMF.
Whew - the CSLA annual conference and meeting was a hit for COMPASS! Thank you all who attended the workshops on Thursday, as well as the speed overviews bright and early on Saturday at 7am (!) and the other sessions from TeachingBooks, ProQuest, the California State Library team from Library Development Services, Gale, and Britannica.
If you’d like to see the slides from COMPASS or cruise through the resource folder for all of the COMPASS partners, you can find them at bit.ly/CSLA2025slides and bit.ly/CSLA2025folder.
Don’t forget to let your school staff know that COMPASS will be at other conferences this spring and to attend our sessions! The full list is on the COMPASS sharable calendar (hosted by Google).
Social Context: Using Pop Culture and Social Media to Make Content Relevant
With the constant inundation of social media and the influence of pop culture in our classrooms and lives, our goal for this convention is to examine ways to use them in the classroom. Neither social media nor pop culture are going away and we want to take the time as educators to embrace them and determine methods and lessons that can emphasize the potential positive aspects of their utilization in a classroom.
The California School Library Foundation is so grateful to all the children’s authors and illustrators who have donated their artwork for our use. We will continue to share more information about these authors with CSLA members each month. We also have been fortunate to have digital art contributed to us by independent graphic designers.
The Digital Citizen design, seen on products in the CSLA Library Advocacy Store, is the creation of Christopher Farmer and Lesley Farmer. Chris designs logos and other images for non-profit organizations such as libraries and Quakers. Chris earned his BS in Graphic Design at the Art Institute, his management certificate at CSU Los Angeles.
He earned an MA in Mass Media and Journalism at Clarion University. Chris lives and works in El Segundo. Thank you so much, Chris and Lesley.
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