Join YALSA President-elect Sarah Flowers for Young Adults Deserve the Best: Using Competencies to Serve Teens in Your Library, a free webinar on Nov. 23 from 2 to 3 p.m. Eastern.

The current generation of teens is the most ethnically diverse and technologically plugged-in ever. Is your library ready to serve them? YALSA’s Competencies for Librarians Serving Youth play a key role in everyday service to young adult patrons. Join Sarah Flowers, YALSA President-elect and author of Young Adults Deserve the Best: Putting YALSA’s Competencies into Action, to discuss practical ways to promote and apply the competencies to ensure quality library service to the teens in your community. WebJunction is pleased to host this webinar in collaboration with the Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA).

The webinar is free, but you must register online first.

This week, YALSA launched the inaugural issue of its open-access, peer-reviewed electronic research journal, the Journal of Research on Libraries and Young Adults at http://yalsa.ala.org/jrlya. The journal will be published quarterly beginning in November 2010, with issues following each February, May and August. You can also subscribe to the journal’s RSS feed

The first issue highlights paper presentations from YALSA’s Young Adult Literature Symposium, held in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Nov. 5-7 with a theme of Diversity, Literature and Teens: Beyond Good Intentions. The papers in the issue are:

• Cultural Inquiry: A Framework for Engaging Youth of Color in the Library, by Dr. Kafi Kumasi
• “Teens Today Don’t Read Books Anymore”: A Study of Differences in Interest and Comprehension Based on Reading Modalities: Part 1, Introduction and Methodology, by Jessica E. Moyer
• Pushing the Envelope: Exploring Sexuality in Teen Literature, by Eleanor Wood

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On Friday night, January 7, 2011 at the San Diego Midwinter Meeting, you have the opportunity to bid on baskets for the chocolate lover. Two of these are:

• “Death by Chocolate” basket, put together by the YALSA Division and Membership Promotion Committee includes chocolate inspired books, chocolate treats as well as anything and everything chocolate surprises. (more…)

Title: Google Mobile
Platforms:  iPhone, Android, Windows, Blackberry
Cost:  free

Even if you’re not a Gmail user, the Google Mobile app packs a punch.

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Around this time of year, like many of you, I start thinking about the gift season fast approaching. As a librarian, my nieces and nephews have always had to contend with gifts of books. Often times I have signed books that I horde after meeting authors who write age appropriate material for my relatives.  That is my favorite gift, a book personally signed by an author. (more…)

October is a great month to spend as a YALSA member. Members celebrated Teen Read Week™ by engaging teens in numerous programming events meant to encourage them to spend more recreational time reading for the fun of it. A new round of the WrestleMania Reading Challenge kicked off with teens signing up at participating libraries and pledging to read books and compete in bookmark competitions for a chance to attend WrestleMania in Atlanta next spring. (more…)

“Why would anyone do that?”
“How does anyone have the time?”

The above are questions I hear regularly when talking with librarians about ways that technology is being used by teens, and by adults too. Most recently these are questions I hear when talking about check-in services. For some librarians the idea of checking-in to a location with FourSquare, Gowalla, or Scvngr, or using a site like GetGlue to “check-in” to let others know about current reading or viewing, seems totally off-the-wall.

As I think more and more about the questions I regularly hear, and how some librarians think about the way teens use technology, I realize again how important it is to separate one’s own experience and way of doing things from the development of library services teens need. (more…)

YALSA is trying something new at the ALA Annual Convention in New Orleans this year…a Table Talk Presentation.  Instead of one topic dominating an entire presentation session, the Teen Services Mashup Table Talks will have multiple sessions running simultaneously, allowing attendees to get a broad sampling of ideas in a short amount of time.  Think science fair for librarians, but more fun. While we have some great presenters already lined up, we’d like a few more to provide a richer variety of topics.

Maybe you’ve thought about presenting at ALA but never thought you’d have an idea big enough to fill an entire session.  Or maybe you’ve never thought about presenting but  you have a great program or concept you’d like to share. If you fit either of these situations, this is a great opportunity for you to step up and share some of those great ideas with the YA librarian community.  More details and applications are available on the YALSA website and are due on  Jan. 31, 2011. We look forward to seeing your ideas.

A short list of tweets posted over the last week that librarians and the teens that they serve may find interesting:

• The next installment of the Cushing Academy bookless library. Is the headmaster really a prophet? http://tinyurl.com/27chbco – @jendimmick
• Borrowing ebooks beyond a library’s walls | Simon Barron http://t.co/tgymzJ1 via @guardian – @eclasper
• New: Parents’ Guide to Facebook w/ lots of hands-on advice & interactive teen privacy chart. Free at www.fbparents.org – @larrymagid
• Good article! RT @lthumann I’m reading Teachers: Please stop prohibiting the use of Wikipedia | ZDNet http://t.co/0BFAFME – @libraryms
• teaser for new article on our iPad study– http://tinyurl.com/33uoocd – @technolibrary (more…)

The second YALSA YA Lit Symposium abounded in riches for the inclusive title hungry: where to mine for new GLBTQ books, how to evaluate requests from teens for street lit, when to stop and do a good readers advisory interview instead of just stocking the shelves and expecting the goods will be found by the readers who want them. Pam Spencer Holley called out the difference between a teen’s reading interests and that of his or her (overprotective?) parent.  Robin Brenner showed off sequential art panels that speak louder than words.  Author, educator, and activist Sophia Quintero reminded all that discussion is a necessary adjunct to reading tough stuff. (more…)