[back to top]

[back to top]

[back to top]

[back to top]
 

Vote for programming for ALA's 2012 Annual Conference

Your feedback is important! Please take a moment to vote on the program proposals received for ALA’s Annual conference in Anaheim, June 21-26, 2012!  The feedback you provide will help determine what programs will be featured.  Voting will be open until August 15^th and the final slate of programs will be announced in September.  Be sure to visit the YALSA wiki regularly for news and updates about YALSA at the conference.
 
For the lowest rates, take advantage of Bundled Registration which opens September 1!

District Days -- Easy Advocacy for your Library

Michael Schor, a member of YALSA’s Legislative Committee, experienced the power of advocating for your library. Schor is a youth services librarian with the Scottsdale Public Library in Arizona. In April, he was told that his and a dozen of other positions would be eliminated. However, thousands of e-mails and phone calls changed the city council’s mind; most of the funding was restored and his position remained intact.

Advocacy is important for librarians and District Days are a great opportunity to advocate for your library. District Days, where congressional representatives are on recess and return to their home district, are August 8th through September 5th. During this time, many representatives hold office hours and are able to meet with constituents on issues.

District Days are a great time to promote your library and the services you offer to teens. The YALSA District Days Wiki has plenty of resources to help you connect with your legislators, including brochures and other guides. Just like Schor’s experience, if your elected officials do not know how well utilized your library is then cuts are a possibility in these lean financial times.

If you have your officials out to District Days the YALSA Legislative Committee wants to hear about it. Please share your stories at: http://wikis.ala.org/yalsa/index.php/Advocating_for_Teen_Services_in_Libraries

Call for Public Comments on Draft Research Agenda

YALSA’s Research Committee invites members and the library community at large to comment on YALSA’s Draft Research Agenda. The goal is to create an agenda that directs and promotes research in the field of young adult librarianship. This call for comments is to improve the document and prepare it for presentation to the YALSA Board.
The committee is soliciting specific comments from now through Aug. 15^th on this revised draft for discussion and potential adoption by YALSA’s Board of Directors. This solicitation is specifically limited to comments addressing the following:

• Accuracy: does the content accurately reflect the current state of research in the field today and provide appropriate direction for future research? If not, what is inaccurate or incomplete?
• Clarity: is the document clear and succinct?  Is it free of jargon?  If not, what specific improvements can be made?
• Completeness: do the four priority areas encompass what is key in young adult librarianship today? If not, what is missing?
• Ease of use: how successfully do you think the agenda overall could be used by the primary target audiences – researchers and graduate schools of library and information science – in order to identify topics for and conduct research? If not easily, what could be changed to make it more successful as an agenda?

Comments that do not fall within these categories may be declared out of scope and left unaddressed. Comments will be compiled and posted online the first week of October.
The draft document is available at http://www.ala.org/ala/mgrps/divs/yalsa/ResearchAgenda_5thdr.pdf Please review the document and submit your comments by the deadline of August 15, 2011 at http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/3TH2TNN.

For further information, please contact Don Latham, Research Committee Chair at dlatham@fsu.edu  or Sarah Flowers, President at sarahflowers@charter.net

Save the Date: 2012 YA Literature Symposium

YALSA’s next biennial symposium will be held Nov. 2 – 4, 2012 at the Hyatt Regency at the Archin St. Louis, MO.  The call for program and paper proposals will open Sept. 1^st 2011, and will be available at www.ala.org/yalitsymposium.  The preliminary program will be available in January 2012.  Registration for the event will open April 2, 2012.  To sign up to receive free email news and updates about the event, go to www.surveymonkey.com/s/CQZPYM5.  Make plans to join a community of librarians and educators to explore the vibrant world of YA Literature!

YALSA School Librarian Survey

Thanks to everyone who participated in YALSA’s 2011 survey for school librarian members, we appreciate your feedback!  Sarah Thornbery was the lucky winner of a free seat in an upcoming YALSA webinar. Congratulations Sarah! The results of the survey are now availble.

Update from YALSA's New President

by Sarah Flowers
YALSA President

As YALSA's new president, my theme for the year is Building the Future. As I'm sure you all know, YALSA has grown tremendously in the past few years, and it's time to take a good look at where we're going, and what we want YALSA to look like in the next few years. Some things I want to work on this year include:
 

• Updating our strategic plan. We got started on this at Annual, and you'll be hearing more about it in the coming months. Please take some time to send your comments in when we submit the draft plan to you in the fall.
•  Working on our advocacy efforts, including creating issue briefs targeted at elected officials, applying for an IMLS National Forum leadership grant, and building YALSA's capacity to do things we want to do by focusing on planned giving, sponsorships, grants, and our Leadership Endowment. 
• Always looking for ways to engage more members in more activities.

 Follow my presidential year on Twitter (@yalsapresident), and retweet freely--help me spread the word about YALSA and all the good things we do for teens and the library workers who serve them.

---

Advertisement

Advertisement

---

Meet YALSA's July Member of the Month: Diana Herald

To see yourself in YALSA E-News or to nominate a colleague, fill out the YALSA Member of the Month form.

Name: Diana Herald

YALSA Member Since: 1989

Involvement with YALSA: Di has been involved in committee work and programs at ALA annual every single year that I've known her. She has been instrumental in promoting science fiction and fantasy, which are genres that are overlooked by many librarians serving teens.  Di is the strongest advocate for teen services that I've ever known and staunchly goes to bat for their rights and has been a wonderful mentor for many new librarians.  Di has served on almost every single YALSA committee over the past 20 years.   

The Best Part of Being a YALSA Member: Di always says that one of the best parts about being a YALSA member is the networking and friendships that she's developed over the years

Favorite YALSA Memory: I met Di when I was a new YALSA member, about 21 or 22 years ago.  She seemed so confident, but made time to chat with me about teen books and helped me to network with other colleagues.  She encouraged me to continue working within YALSA and thanks to her advocacy, I've learned to at least enjoy sf and fantasy!  Di does a lot of writing for journals too, and in addition has completed several Genreflecting books.

Hobbies: Di swims, plays with her grandbabies, and has even built her own completely off the grid" house on the edge of a canyon in Colorado!  She's an electronic nut and always has new toys.

Emerging Leaders Application Deadline

ALA has announced that applications for the 2012 Emerging Leaders Program are now open. Applications must be received by August 1; the form is available here: http://www.ala.org/ala/educationcareers/leadership/emergingleaders/index.cfm YALSA will sponsor one Emerging Leader of the 2012 class. For questions, please contact Beatrice Calvin at 1- 800-545-2433 ext. 4280.

[back to top]

ALA Conference Wrap Up

by Tammy DiBartolo
Co-Chair Local Arrangments Committee

Could we have had any more fun in New Orleans? There was the great food, music and history of the city and the conference itself had much to offer.  Author signings, guest speakers, training sessions, free books and vendor parties all made for a great conference.

With changes occurring so quickly in libraries today, conferences offer a great opportunity to connect with colleagues and learn about the latest developments in the field. Many great ideas were exchanged over coffee and doughnuts (or beignets).

Don’t forget to check out “Making the Most of Your Conference Experience“ on the YALSA wiki. Looking ahead to 2012, it is time to start planning for MidWinter in Dallas, another fun town. It is also a good time to begin thinking about serving on a selection committee. Check out YALSA's website to complete a committee application.