Join YALSA at Midwinter! YALSA’s coming to Dallas for the ALA Midwinter Meeting, Jan. 20-24. We’re hosting a fab pre-Midwinter workshop on innovations in teen services, a trivia FUNdraiser, a poster session on teens in detention centers, a coffee with the candidates session, and more! Register now at www.alamidwinter.org. Registration starts at $170 for YALSA members. See everything YALSA has planned for Midwinter.

Teen Read Week Photo Contest: Teens ages 13-18 can enter YALSA’s Teen Read Week photo contest through Oct. 31! TRW 2011 Spokesperson Jay Asher will judge the contest, in which teens can make a visual representation of their favorite book and post it to Flickr. Contest details, including a tag and an entry form, are available at www.ala.org/teenread.

Summer Reading Funding: Apply now for a Summer Reading Grant from YALSA and the Dollar General Literacy Foundation! Twenty libraries will receive $1,000 for summer reading 2012. Applications due Jan. 1.

Call for Proposals: Do you know what the Next Big Thing in YA lit is? Tell YALSA! Visit www.ala.org/yalitsymposium to submit your paper or program proposal for the 2012 Young Adult Literature Symposium, The Future of Young Adult Literature: Hit Me with the Next Big Thing, to be held Nov. 2-4 in St. Louis. Proposals are due by Nov. 15. Want updates on the symposium? Join the symposium mailing list. Questions? Contact Nichole Gilbert at ngilbert@ala.org.

YA Forum: Calling all YALSA members! We’ll be discussing steampunk during the first week of November. Mark your calendar and log on at http://connect.ala.org/yalsa.

New Research Agenda: Check out YALSA’s new research agenda, finalized this month by the board of directors.

We Need Your Feedback: YALSA has posted a draft of its national guidelines on teen spaces. Read more about the draft and how to submit your comments on the Teen Space Guidelines webpage.

Want more YALSA news? Follow YALSA on Facebook and Twitter.

The Burlington Public Library in Burlington, Massachusetts has planned some exciting Teen Read Week events.

This is what we’ve shared with our teens:
Help us celebrate Teen Read Week from October 16-22. This year’s theme is: Picture It @ Your Library!

Teen Read Week Book Talk, Monday, October 17th from 3:30-4:15pm. Come to the Book Talk and learn more about graphic novels! Feel free to bring your own graphic novels to share.

 Teen Animanga Club – with giveaways! Don’t forget to check out this month’s Teen Animanga Club! Drop by the library Thursday, October 20 from 2:45-4pm!

Teen Read Week Party! Friday, October 21st from 3-4:30pm. Celebrate the end of Teen Read Week with some food and fun!

In addition, we are running a: Picture It! Contest

The Picture It! Contest will run from Sunday, October 16th to Saturday, October 22nd. Choose a favorite scene/quote from a book and illustrate it. Entry forms (including contest rules) will be available in the library starting Sunday, October 16th.

Please click here for the entry form.

Here’s a short list of tweets posted over the last week that librarians and the teens that they serve may find interesting:

• How do we prepare kids for jobs we can’t imagine yet? Teach imagination http://su.pr/2Vbvm5 – @GOOD
• Watch @lrainie’s keynote address at the Internet Librarian conference, “Libraries and Learning Communities”: http://pewrsr.ch/nbwu6P – @pewinternet
• Great chat last nite on apps in libraries. More to say later, but here’s the archive http://ow.ly/73lyp – @kishizuka
• Designing a virtual bookcase for the digital world http://goo.gl/ldU7O, play w/ it on our Chrome experiments page http://goo.gl/9YDQE – @Google (more…)

Title: Pearltrees
Platform: iPad (iOS 3.2 or later)
Cost: Free

I’ve known about the Pearltrees website for quite awhile but never found using it that easy or intuitive. Then I read the review of the new Pearltrees iPad app on ReadWriteWeb and thought, “I have to try this out.” The idea of the service is to provide users the ability to create visual mind map curated lists of websites. (The websites are the pearls on the tree in Pearltrees.) Once I started working with the iPad app I realized there is a lot of potential in the idea of a curated list of websites represented in a mind map. This is particularly true because of all of the features available in the Pearltrees app. (more…)

Our public library regularly hosts film festivals for teens, offering them a choice of a variety of movies and allowing them to decide which to view that evening. We provide snacks and some quality company. For Teen Read Week, we focused on movie choices that were stories that originated as novels, including I Am Number Four and Flipped (the latter title was a huge hit with summer reading this past year). The focus of the PICTURE IT Film Festival was to point out that movies and books are two different perspectives on telling a story. For many readers, stories are told beautifully with words that allow us to create our own scenery and become connected to characters in our own ways. For just as many viewers, stories are told through images, colors, actions, and emotions portrayed directly through our physical senses. The stories are the same, but the perspectives are often vastly different. Some readers (and viewers) simply enjoy a different method of storytelling over another. It’s up to the readers and viewer to internalize the story in their own way, whether it’s read, seen, or both!

(more…)

A few weeks ago, my husband, a security consultant, met with a city about finding vulnerabilities in their network. When he met with the city’s library director, one of the questions he asked was, “You don’t filter your public computers, do you?” My husband texted me immediately after his meeting to say, “You should be proud of me. I told them to keep their public computers unfiltered.”

There is some irony to this. He is, after all, the same man who used to be responsible for blocking access to Web sites at his former company, but his stance on filtering makes complete sense. His company had an Internet policy for its employees, for one, and he kept constant vigilance to make sure nothing got past the filters that shouldn’t and that innocuous sites were still accessible. His stance is that filters should not be used in a public setting, especially when constant modifications cannot be made, because it infringes on First Amendment rights.

(more…)

Teen Read Week is the preferred week in our library calendar, largely because students refer to it as “cookie week”.  I am not above using shameless bribery to get kids into the library, particularly during the first two months of school, and I am the first to admit that my killer recipe for chocolate chip cookies has played a key role in my success as a librarian.

To my mind, theme weeks are a gift from the ALA gods.  Banned Books Week is my preferred method for teasing newbies into the library space in September (my library advisory board’s favorite display is all the books taught in our English curriculum which are banned in other schools or public libraries – it makes them feel like James Dean-esque rebels), but October is all about reading for fun, and that means playing up Teen Read Week in a big, big way.

(more…)

YALSA’s website states that Teen Read Week 2011 will be celebrated at thousands of public and school libraries, classrooms, and bookstores across the country.  As Kool and the Gang might sing…YAHOO! Let’s all celebrate and have a good time!

Unfortunately, when adults think about teens and parties, it often involves a mental connection to negative teen behaviors.  Providing a safe and positive event for teens to interact socially can be challenging, but extremely worthwhile for teens and also the community that surrounds them.

This week, the library system I work for hosted its second annual Teen Read Week Lock-in, and over 120 students joined us for a massive celebration with games, dancing, face painting, scavenger hunts, crafts, and prizes. Across my social networks, I’ve seen hundreds of posts from other libraries about their Teen Read Week celebrations. These included DJ’s, concerts, read-a-thons, carnivals, costume parties, anime & movie showings, and so much more.  Many of these events have been planned months and years ahead of time, and I am consistently amazed at the level of creativity & expertise of my colleagues.

(more…)

Do you have a passion for teen services? Would you like to provide up-to-the-minute coverage of YALSA programs and events? Can you see yourself scouring the web for the best apps, games and websites for teens? The YALSA Blog wants YOU!

We’re looking to expand our ranks of regular bloggers. We need dedicated, talented writers with strong communication skills and a willingness to collaborate. You must be a current YALSA member who can commit to posting at least once a month, on topics of your choosing as well as on rotating themes and month-long projects. Podcast and video skills are a big plus.

Being a YALSA blogger helps your fellow librarians, by providing timely, cutting edge content on teen services and youth library resources, but it can also help you. Many of us who write for the blog have gone on to manage or edit YALSA publications, chair committees and task forces, and even serve as YALSA President. I started posting when I was still in grad school, and my work with the blog (both as an author and as a manager) has led to presenting at national conferences and writing a book for YALSA and Neal-Schuman.

For more information on blogging for YALSA, read the blogger guidelines and contact YB manager mk Eagle at eagle.mk@gmail.com.

RoseMary Honnold, Teen Read Week Committee Chair

Editor-in-Chief, VOYA Magazine

Happy Teen Read Week!

Time is our greatest gift, and giving your time to the people and things that matter most to you creates a satisfying life for you and the recipients benefit in many ways. The Search Institute lists asset building ideas for youth workers and the key to all of the ideas is quality time spent engaging teens in conversation, meaningful activities, and providing space and materials that they need. (http://www.search-institute.org/content/asset-building-ideas-for-youth-workers) As teachers and librarians and parents who care about teens, giving your time to do these things is one of the most important parts of your jobs.

Yet, it is not always an easy task to inflict yourself upon teens in the library. Teens can be a bit leery of adults, sporting a well-earned paranoia that the adults are suspicious and watching them for misdeeds. So, finding ways that make it easy and comfortable for teens to talk with you is a big step to building relationships with them and making the library a more welcoming place.

(more…)