In this podcast Stephanie Iser talks with librarians and teens about gaming, technology, zines, and youth participation.

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Read on to find out more about who Stephanie talked with and for links to resources mentioned. (more…)

First off, thanks to our YALSA bloggers for doing such a great job blogging ALA Annual Conference. We were happy to see so many thought-provoking posts and reflections on our week in Anaheim.

…speaking of Annual Conference

If you attended Annual Conference, be sure to take our post-conference survey. Help us improve our offerings and operations for Annual 2009.

Listen to the 2008 Printz Speeches

Couldn’t make it to Annual or want to relive the most exciting evening in YA literature? Then visit the Printz Award webpage and listen to mp3 versions of our winners’ speeches! (more…)

The Michael L. Printz Awards program and reception is a big highlight for YALSA members who attend Annual, and the 2008 awards were no exception. Luckily for those who weren’t able to attend (or who wish to relive the fun), YALSA is providing mp3 versions of the speeches on the Printz website, courtesy Brilliance Audio.

You can hear speeches from Geraldine McCaughrean, the 2008 winner, and the four honor book winners: Judith Clarke, Elizabeth Knox, A. M. Jenkins and Stephanie Hemphill, or you can listen to the entire ceremony. We’ve embedded players for each speech and the full ceremony on the Printz website, or you can click the links to each players speech and save it to listen to another time.

Thanks again to Brilliance Audio for providing the mp3 versions of the speeches. Congratulations again to our Printz-winning authors!

I’m a new blogger here at YALSA and I’m very excited to get to tell about the YALSA Tech for YA committee poster session at ALA Annual.It is always great to see what others are doing on a practical level. There were presentations by students as well as librarians.

Seth of Flamingnet Book Reviews began his site in 2002 when he was just 15 years old! It has now grown and has contributors from across the US.  Seth was a delight to speak with and it you haven’t checked out his project, do yourself a favor and visit http://flamingnet.com

Morgan McPheeters and Jake Mayfield of the Farmington Public Library in New Mexico showed off their poster on their teen zine, Blended.  The teens were so knowledgeable and their project was very well done.The zine produced was a high quality, full color zine that any teen would want to read. (more…)

Two of my favorite presentations were given by teens while in Anaheim. Seth Cassel with Flamingnet Book Reviews presented as part of the YALSA Outreach to Young Adults with Special Needs panel presentation on Hyperlinks: Reaching Teens Outside the library as well as the YALSA Technology for Young Adults poster session. He is a true entrepreneur, appeared to enjoy presenting, and has such a fantastic product which started grassroots and has grown into such a rich community.  Check out his article in YALS from last summer. (more…)

While attending the ALA conference I had the wonderful opportunity of hearing first-hand the successes of a very active teen advisory group located at the Oakland Public Library. Active teen leaders shared stories about reaching out into the community to represent the library to their peers and elders. Here is a summary of what teens at Oakland Public Library are doing to connect the community with library resources:

• Teens participate in library legislative day by traveling to the state capital and meeting with senators to advocate for libraries.
• They represent the library and youth library council at public speaking and community events.
• Teens present concerns and issues to the library board.
• The teen panelists explained how being YLC members has provided them with opportunities to develop skills in public speaking, organization, and reaching out to others. (more…)

Whew! What a busy, exciting, thoughtful, fun, educational conference! It definitely takes a few days to settle back into “real life” after a conference.  My head is always spinning with new ideas, my mind is filled with thoughts of people I’ve met and conversations we’ve had, and my imagination has undoubtedly been captured by lots of new books. (more…)

We had a very low turnout for our Teen Gaming Interest Group meeting on Saturday afternoon, making a swap and share of resources difficult at best. One of the things we did was unanimously elect Jami Schwarzwalder as the new chair fo the Teen Gaming Interest Group. Congrats, Jami!

We also discussed creating a list of great games (tabletop and videogames) for teen programming. The list has been started on the YALSA wiki; please feel free to contribute annotations.

On Sunday morning, I counted over 125 at our Sunday Morning program, Beyond Gaming Tournaments. Slides and handouts are forthcoming.

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While I did not spend much time at the exhibits due to other commitments, I did bring home some ARCs to read. I spent most of the flight back to Houston reading TENDER MORSELS. I hope to finish the book this weekend. However, more than books, I brought back with me some terrific memories and some valuable information. (more…)

Since so many teen librarians are making the case for social networking still, I thought this OCLC session on Library Mashups would be of interest. I noticed they were taping; the session will probably be online soon at http://www.oclc.org/.
“Mashups on web are on the verge of replacing the PC as the dominant computing platform”
~Andrew K. Pace, OCLC

Andrew K. Pace defined mashup as something remixed to improve functionality and innovation as response to change under circumstance “hacking!”  He stressed that change is inevitable, and quoted Darwin reminding us that the successful species are the most adaptable ones. Pace referenced the 10 Dangerous Ideas presentation from PLA presentation , and invited attendees to jot down on notecards provided, their greatest resource and greatest challenge as we continued our discussion of innovation. (more…)