About

Welcome to Mel’s Desk! I’m Melissa Depper, and I’ve been a children’s librarian in the Denver metro area since 1996. My professional interests include early literacy, early childhood programs and services, parent and caregiver education, staff development and training, and storytime.

I work full-time at a suburban Denver public library district in youth services, where I spend most of my time creating and leading staff training, and developing early literacy based programs and services. This spring I had the great good fortune to be named one of Library Journal’s 2013 Movers & Shakers.

In January 2013 wrapped up a five-year stint on the Steering Committee of Colorado Libraries for Early Literacy. In addition, I was one of two public library advisors to the Early Childhood Librarian Fellowship program at the University of Denver. As part of this project, I twice have team-taught a class on early childhood materials and services to the LIS students there. Currently I’m chairing the selection committee of the brand-new CLEL Bell Awards, an initiative to celebrate great picture books that support early literacy development in young children.

I present workshops and trainings outside my library as time allows, and had the great fun of completing my first national presentation at the 2012 ALSC Institute, where my supervisor and I shared the storytime competencies and observation forms we’ve developed for our library. I serve on the ALSC Children & Technology Committee, and I also have a great time hanging out with the Flannel Friday online community. I love what I do and am learning all the time.

On this blog I write most often about storytime, but also occasionally about other youth services projects and programs, past and present. While I share a lot of what I’m working on for my library, my opinions are of course my own.

You can find me (too often probably) on Twitter, and you can check out my picture book account on GoodReads. You can reach me via post comments here at Mel’s Desk, or by email to melsdesk at comcast dot net.

Thanks for visiting!