YALSA is planning a new publication, YALSA’s Complete Summer Reading Program Manual for Teen and Tween Services.

Kat Kan, the book’s editor, is looking for information on summer reading programs and the other kinds of programming libraries do for teens and tweens during the summer.  Want more information or interested in submitting your summer reading program? Visit the book’s website!

(more…)

It’s likely that you don’t want to miss recent news stories about social media, technology, and teens:

• A story in the New York Times on sexting titled A Girl’s Nude Photo, and Altered Lives focused on the tale of a middle school girl whose sending of a nude photo to her boyfriend, via her cellphone, had really horrible ramifications. One of the things that really struck me about the story was the quick involvement of law enforcement. Fortunately, the students involved were able to take part in a community service program instead of going to court for the sexting. However, the story points to the need to find methods to educate teens about sexting in order to help guarantee they have the skills and knowledge necessary in order to make smart decisions about this kind of text messaging. The issues related to sexting and teens were discussed in a show that aired yesterday on Boston’s WBUR radio station. (more…)

Name: ToonFX Paint

Platform: Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Requires iOS 3.0 or later

Cost: $1.99

For teens seeking a unique avatar or hoping to infuse their pictures with a little comic panache, ToonFX Paint offers a nearly foolproof way to enhance images from your camera roll.

Importing the image into the App transforms it into a Van Gogh-esque effect in gray scale, and a pallete enables you to match colors to the original or from a spectrum.

(more…)

NOW IS THE TIME!

 Whether you are currently a member of YALSA, a past member, or just hovering on the edges of membership, you have one more day to participate in this brief (but important!) survey. The deadline is tomorrow, March 31.

 YALSA will be developing a new Strategic Plan. This is a dynamic plan that is fueled by input from the greater YALSA community. For example, since the implementation of the 2008 Strategic Plan, YALSA has responded to the need to increase member participation by creating more opportunities for virtual participation. There is now a YALSA Mentoring program that pairs new teen librarians with experienced librarian mentors, and YALSA provides many opportunities to get involved, share ideas and network with other professionals.

So what will it be next? What can YALSA do to help you better serve the teens in your library? Take15 minutes now to complete the survey and contribute to the future of YALSA.

An interesting discussion has popped up on yalsa-lockdown, a listserve set up to discuss issues unique to librarians working with incarcerated youth. A few weeks ago librarians started discussing getting together at ALA and now a meetup is being planned for the Saturday evening of the ALA conference in New Orleans.  This meetup is a great idea.

 There have been some inspiring presentations on working with incarcerated youth at past ALA conferences. At every ALA that I am able to attend, I always look forward to attending presentations on serving this unique population.  While incarcerated, teens, with the encouragement of staff and outreach librarians, often pick up books for recreational reading – sometimes for the first time their life. (more…)

For this episode of the YALSA podcast we talk to Michelle Gorman and Kelly Czarnecki of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg library system, whose Teen Video Advocacy Project won YALSA’s Think Big About Advocacy Contest.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

If  you prefer, you may go to the YALSA Podcast site, download the Mp3 file and listen to it on the Mp3 player of your choice. To avoid missing future episodes, add the feed to Itunes or any other rss feed tracker.

To see the videos and read more about YALSA’s Think Big About Advocacy contest, go the contest page on YALSA’s website.

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

• So much I want to quote from this interview! Henry Jenkins interviews James Paul Gee: http://ow.ly/4iYdj (via @henryjenkins) – @TnCntrl
• We should all have this poster in our libraries and tech labs. re: image use http://bit.ly/eItniW – @Ms_Bock
• Teens like vinyl records!? http://slate.me/ijAzCC #Whodathunkit! #BogusTrends – @slate
• The Full Wiki Makes Wikipedia a Deeper, More Citable Research Tool http://lifehac.kr/ewQVvd – @lifehacker
• High-school seniors predict the future. We asked 18 students about their 10-year plans. Hear the answers. http://nyti.ms/e9AShT – @nytimesmagazine
• E-books enthrall young readers, so libraries try to keep pace http://ow.ly/4jf0T – @shannonmiller (more…)

My first App of the Week review for YALSA was about Pulse, one of my favorite iPad apps for creating a personalized magazine from news feeds. Over the last several months several of this category of apps have launched. In this App of the Week column, I thought I’d change things just a bit and review a few of these apps (instead of reviewing just one for the week), note what is unique about each, and provide some ideas on how to choose what to use.

BroadFeed
Cost: 99 cents
This is the newest personalized magazine app with which I’m familiar. The idea is simple, use BroadFeed as a visual way to read through Tweets that include links. (The app only shows Tweets that contain links.) The setup is also simple. The first time you launch BroadFeed you type in your Twitter username and password and the app then imports the most recent postings from your feed.
(more…)

Every day we read in the news about how libraries are facing more and more cuts; each day we read about another librarian losing his/her job or a school losing its librarians altogether.

As I see it, we have only two choices here: (more…)

What is the YALSA Strategic Plan?

It is your plan as a member of YALSA and we need your vision to make the plan vital and relevant!  Part of what YALSA membership offers you is the opportunity for continuous learning and professional development.  YALSA offers a wide array of ways that you can be engaged as a member and continue your education in the field.  YALSA offers online courses, webinars(the current one is about Job Hunting!), a YALSA Mentoring Program for newer members, a Professional Development section, the Journal of Research on Libraries and Young Adults and an opportunity to participate in First Wednesdays where you can network and exchange ideas with your local YALSA members.  All of these resources are found on the YALSA web page and all support the Strategic Plan.

The plan is a living working document that is only as good as the input we receive from you as members.  Please take a moment to take the survey about what you want to happen in the next years with YALSA.  The survey will be up until March 31st and we would love to hear your ideas!  Envision the future, dream big and share your ideas with us!  We need to hear from you!