Here’s another thing to get you geared up for ALA’s Annual Conference in Anaheim this June. The Library Research Round Table is looking for presentation proposals related to three areas of library research. Abstracts must be submitted by December 20, 2011, and notification of acceptance will be sent in late February, 2012. Accepted proposals will be presented at the ALA Annual from June 21-26. If you have recent or in-progress research relating to users, problem solving, or innovation, consider submitting.

LRRT defines their three categories as this: (more…)

A couple of weeks ago YALSABlog readers may have noticed that the weekly Tweets of the Week had a new format. A few days after that revision there was a Blog post that used Storify (The tool also used for the Tweets of the Week) to highlight findings in a new Pew Internet and American Life report on teens and social networking. Some may wonder, “what’s going on here?” Well, what’s going on is that curation has come to the YALSABlog and curation is probably something that you are or will be thinking about for the work you do with teens.

There has been a lot of buzz about curation over the past several months. What people are talking about when they buzz about content curation is the organization of information, usually using web-based tools, on a particular topic. For example, Storify enables users to search a variety of sources, including Twitter, YouTube, Google, and Facebook, to uncover and organize topic content. With Storify it’s possible to integrate text in-between curated resources to provide context and flow to the curated content. For example, the Storify below is all about the Austin Teen Book Festival.
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A few days ago the Pew Internet and American Life Project released their latest report on teens and social networking. The document is filled with up-to-date data that anyone working with teens will want to take a look at in order to better understand teen use of and engagement in online social environments. The Pew report also provides a look into the role adults play in the lives of teens who are a part of the social networking world.

Check out the Storify created that captures some of the ideas presented in the report and what people are saying about it via the web and social media.
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Miss hiding out in your university library? Tired of only reading library publications? Want to know what other scholars are doing? Once a month I’ll do the browsing for you and let you know what’s going on in the world of pop culture, sociology, literature, pedagogy, and more. If it seems relevant to libraries or young adult services, you’ll find it here. When possible, I’ll also offer some insights or suggestions on application for libraries or librarians. Revel in being a student again!

• Contexts Discoveries, a sociology blog, says that Facebook isn’t just a tool for social interaction, but it’s a tool for sociologists to study how students create their physical social networks. With our world getting more technological every moment, it’s good to know how your patrons view their social roles and responsibilities.
• David Darts describes how artists and art teachers have combined social justice education with art education and created street art projects that didn’t just bring art to the public but also brought the streets to the public’s eye. Posing as panhandlers, street artists, and shoppers, students “performed” the streets after a series of activities in the classroom and out including field research, interviews, and journal reflections. This “performance art pedagogy” incorporated visual art, acting, and social research and made the students more aware of street life and culture, in both its positive and negative aspects. Take a look at the community surrounding your library, and think about your teen patron base–would this be an activity for them? And would it be an eye opening one, or a validating one? How can you approach the sensitive subject of homelessness, the sex trade, poverty, and social exclusion in a way that’s meaningful for your community?
  Darts, David. “Invisible Culture: Taking Art Education to the Streets.” Art Education, 64:5, 2011. 49-53.
• There is a lot of talk in libraries about how best to serve the “underserved,” the “low-achieving,” the “at-risk,” and rightfully so. But what about serving and supporting the needs of gifted and creative young people? Two articles in the spring issue of Gifted Child Today address these issues. (more…)

Google texts and teen writing skills and you will get many articles on how texting negatively effects teen’s formal writing skills, all loaded with quotes from teachers about how they have seen the negative impact texting has on these skills.

The most interesting article I found was in the New York Times , printed in 2002 . The arguments made almost ten years ago are still the sames ones you will read about over and over in any article/blog/web forum today. Basically, that the shorthand teens use in text messaging is detrimental to their writing and can be found in written assignments, much to the frustration of their teachers.

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

• NEW PAPER: “Why Parents Help their Children Lie to Facebook about Age: Unintended Consequences of COPPPA” http://bit.ly/tDAG7A – @zephoria
• End citation obsession bit.ly/uI0yaJ – 21centuryteach
• “Are Libraries the Hackerspaces of the Future?” Libs as makerspace or fab labs. Fayetteville Free Lib gets shout out. bit.ly/v6zOvk – @jaclark
• Younger adults are more likely to download + use apps, but older adults are more likely to pay for them. New report: pewrsr.ch/vIneMN – @mary_madden
• Digital Natives are: a) always young b) born digital c) live digital lives d) all of the above e) none of the above Digital Natives are: a) always young b) born digital c) live digital lives d) all of the above e) none of the above bit.ly/rcfeRz – @dmlcentral
• iPads in Schools: ‘The Last Generation with Backpacks’? — CNN ow.ly/7fShd – @clifmims (more…)

Hello! I’m Hannah Gómez, a new blogger and new member of YALSA, thanks in part to the Spectrum Scholarship. I’ll be blogging regularly about research and other topics, but today I wanted to start by telling you who I am, what I do, and why I’m here. Also, I’ll let you know why I find YALSA’s new research agenda so interesting, and why you should as well.

First things first. I’m a Tucson, Arizona, native who went to the University of Arizona for undergrad, studying creative writing, music, and Spanish. A few months ago, an airplane I was on touched down in Boston, the last flight to be allowed into the closed airport before Hurricane Irene hit. I’ve just started graduate school here at Simmons College, where I’m enrolled in their dual degree program, which will leave me with an MA in children’s literature and an MLS with a focus on youth services.

The future in library science just hit me one day. I had been answering people’s “So what will you do with your Bachelor’s?” with a general “Dunno. Go to grad school” for so long and all of a sudden I just blurted out “Be a librarian.” But it made since. In high school I never had to work at the mall or the car wash–I was lucky enough to get a job in social services, and though I held a variety of different jobs and internships over high school and college, most of them were related to the world of non-profits and at-risk youth. My favorite job was when I got promoted to community service project leader, supervising 8-14-year-olds who had been arrested and had court-ordered service hours to perform. I, at 19, was deemed responsible enough to oversee their work, keep them on task, and, I hoped, help them see something meaningful in what they were doing, whether it was painting in a community art project or picking up trash at a neighborhood park. I got to be a big sister type to the kids I worked with, and while doing our work we would also talk about the books, music, and movies they liked. So it seems to make sense. I love teenagers, especially middle schoolers, and I am a huge nerd who is always trying to find the right book for someone. I’m also the child of two teachers and the sister of a teacher, so I know how much, especially in these times, both teachers and students need the help of librarians, and both school and library settings are essential to developing youths. Compound that with my interest in social justice and non-profits, and voila! I want to be something like all of you.

So why the extra degree? Why the crit classes where you read as much Freud and Barthes as you do Virginia Hamilton and nursery rhymes? Well, (more…)

As Chair of the Research Journal Editorial Advisory Board, I’m very pleased to share this call for papers for the Journal of Research on Libraries and Young Adults. JRLYA is YALSA’s spanking new online research journal. Check out the guidelines and give it a go!

Call for Papers: The Journal of Research on Libraries and Young Adults

The Journal of Research on Libraries and Young Adults, the official research journal of the Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA), is an online open-access, peer-reviewed journal.  The purpose of Journal of Research on Libraries and Young Adults is to enhance the development of theory, research, and practices to support young adult library services. Journal of Research on Libraries and Young Adults presents high quality original research concerning the informational and developmental needs of young adults; the management, implementation, and evaluation of library services for young adults; and other critical issues relevant to librarians who work with young adults. The journal also includes literary and cultural analyses of classic and contemporary writing for young adults. Manuscripts are currently being accepted for the Fall issue. Please submit your manuscript by September 1, 2011.

Journal of Research on Libraries and Young Adults invites manuscripts based on original qualitative, quantitative, synthetic, or mixed method research; an innovative conceptual framework; or a substantial literature review that opens new areas of inquiry and investigation.  Case studies and works of literary analysis are also welcome. The journal’s editorial board recognizes the contributions that other disciplines make to expanding and enriching theory, research, and practice in young adult library services and encourages submissions from researchers, students, and practitioners in all fields.

The Journal of Research on Libraries and Young Adults uses the Chicago Manual of Style endnotes.  For complete author guidelines including examples of citations, please visit the author guidelines.  While submissions average 4,000 to 7,000 words, manuscripts of all lengths will be considered.  Full color images, photos, and other media are all accepted.

Please contact Editor Sandra Hughes-Hassell at yalsaresearch@gmail.com  to discuss submissions and author guidelines.  All completed manuscripts should be submitted as email attachments to yalsaresearch@gmail.com.  Please attach each figure or graphic as a separate file.

The Journal of Research on Libraries and Young Adults is available online at http://www.yalsa.ala.org/jrlya.

How many times has Teen Read Week or Teen Tech Week rolled around and you’re busy reading the latest YALS issue or scouring the YALSA wiki to come up with programs for your teens related to the theme? While those materials won’t go away anytime soon (and thank goodness for them each year-right?!), we wanted to make sure you’re aware of another great resource that’s a compilation of ideas for both of YALSA’s national initiatives.

Earlier this year, YALSA published a book through the American Library Association, edited by Megan Fink, Teen Read Week and Teen Tech Week: Tips and Resources for YALSA’s Initiatives. Following is an interview with Megan about what you can find in this great read. (more…)

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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