Monthly President’s Report – April 2012

April was a very interesting month for me on the YALSA front. I’m just back from a week in Washington, D.C. On Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday of last week, YALSA Executive Director Beth Yoke and I, along with several hundred other library supporters, attended National Library Legislative Day. Beth and I had eight separate meetings over two days, with legislators’ staff members, and with representatives from other organizations that have similar interests to YALSA, such as the Afterschool Alliance, the Center for Excellent Education, and the International Reading Association. We talked about how we could support one another’s missions.

Then on Friday and Saturday of the same week, I staffed the YALSA booth at the USA Science and Engineering Festival at the Washington Convention Center. Along with DC-area YALSA members, I handed out bookmarks and flyers, showed the demo of the YALSA Teen Book Finder App (available in May—we hope—from Apple’s App Store), chatted with teens, parents, teachers, and librarians, and did some on-the-fly readers’ advisory. We encouraged teens to participate in this year’s Teens’ Top Ten, and there was a lot of interest and enthusiasm.

Below is a summary of activities that I have completed or am working on. (more…)

Monthly President’s Report – February 2012

March kind of sneaked up on me, I guess because February is a short month. Below is a summary of activities that I have completed or am working on. Happy Teen Tech Week!

Completed Tasks

• Committee Chairs:  I had phone conversations with several YALSA committee chairs about the work of their committees.

• Board Activities:  
  • The Board had an online chat on February 1. Board members offered suggestions for the content of the selection and award committee chair and member webinars.
  • The Board met by telephone on February 29 to discuss chair quarterly reports and to take action on two requests for Board action that came from committees.
  • The Board voted to accept a proposal from the Morris Award committee to amend the eligibility rules to exclude self-published and e-book only books from consideration. The new rule will be re-evaluated after the 2013 award. (more…)

As you know, the ALA/YALSA election season has started. Polls are open March 19 through April 27 and YALSA has candidates on the association’s slate running for governance positions and candidates running for awards positions. In this post I’ll talk about the governance positions and provide information on resources you can access to learn more about the positions. The information should also help you think about what you want to consider when you cast your ballot. (Next week 2012 YALSA Nominating Committee member Dawn Rutherford will post on the awards slate with information on those positions.)

This year the positions open on the YALSA governance slate are (the full slate is available on the YALSAblog):

• President-elect/President
• Board of Directors
• YALSA Councilor

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Monthly President’s Report – January 2012

What a month! Midwinter was busy-busy-busy, but also a lot of fun. I had a fabulous time emceeing the Youth Media Awards and the Morris/Nonfiction Awards Event. It was great to see so many YALSA members: at the Midwinter Institute, at the Midwinter Trivia Night FUNdraiser, at meetings, at the YALSA Happy Hour, at the Youth Media Awards event, and at the AASL/ALSC/YALSA joint membership reception.

Below is a summary of activities that I have completed or am working on. (more…)

Monthly President’s Report – September 2011

Below is a summary of activities that I have completed or am working on.

Completed Tasks

• Committee Chairs:
  • Had phone conversations with several YALSA committee chairs about the work of their committees.
• Board Activities:
  • Participated in September 7 Board chat on how the YALSA Board can be involved with Planned Giving and fundraising.
• (more…)

Monthly YALSA President’s Report – August 2011

Below is a summary of activities that I have completed or am working on.

Completed Tasks

• Committee Chairs:
  • Had phone conversations with several YALSA committee chairs.
  • Participated in conference calls with the chairs of Strategic Planning and 2011 Awards & Lists Marketing Taskforce.
  • Had a phone conversation with Linda Braun, chair of the Financial Advancement Committee, about ways to build up the Leadership Endowment.
  • Participated with ALSC and AASL Presidents in preparing and sending a letter to the chairs of the three divisions’ intellectual freedom committees/interest groups. (more…)

Monthly President’s Report – July 2011

My first month as YALSA President has been a busy one. Below is a summary of activities that I have completed or am working on.

Completed Tasks

• Presented two webinars for new chairs of  process committees, task forces, and juries about their roles and responsibilities.
• Presented (with Beth Yoke) a webinar for new board members about the relationship of YALSA and ALA.
• Had phone conversations with several YALSA committee chairs about the upcoming work of their committees.
• Had phone conversation with Lesley Farmer, YALSA’s IFLA representative, about the upcoming IFLA Conference and about what information about YALSA she should share there.
• Set up the @yalsapresident Twitter account, and began tweeting information about YALSA activities and linking to articles on teens and libraries.
• Filled a vacancy on the Best Fiction for Young Adults committee.
• Appointed members to a task force charged to write a manual for the Odyssey Award Committee.

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Like 20,000 other people, I attended Annual this year. It was only the second time I’ve been, so before I left, I sat down to think about how I wanted this experience to be similar to and different from my last/first time (Chicago 2009). I knew I wanted to be bolder in approaching people I didn’t know so that I could meet and talk with more people, and I definitely feel like I succeeded in that! Another one of my goals for my Annual experience this year was to learn more about YALSA as an organization and to find out more about what YALSA does beyond what I’ve experienced so far.

And what better way to do that, I thought, than to sit in on a Board meeting? ALA has an open meeting policy, which means that almost all of the business ALA and its divisions conduct are open to members with the exception of “matters affecting the privacy of individuals or institutions.” Thus, while you can’t sit in on the Printz committee’s deliberations, you can attend Board meetings and hear what issues YALSA’s governing body discusses and the decisions that they come to. (more…)

About a month and a half ago, YALSA members elected Jack Martin as 2012-2013 YALSA President. While he was interviewed for the YALSA Podcast during the elections as a candidate, I had some more questions for him now that he’s just weeks away from officially beginning his term as President-Elect. Jack kindly agreed to answer those questions for me.

What was the first thing you did when you learned that you’d won the election?

I called my husband and my mom to tell them the good news!
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April was a month of celebrations as we acknowledged and celebrated School Library Month along with both National Library Week and National Volunteer Week during the week of April 10-16, 2011. And as always we celebrated Support Teen Literature Day on the Thursday of National Library week with the announcement of the 2011 Teens’ Top Ten nominations and the launch of the  Teen Read Week™ website.

Along with thanking all of our hardworking members and library workers this month, I also want to send out a special thank you to the 2011 Summer Reading TF chaired by Charli Osborne. This newly appointed group, not only came together to begin their task, but quickly organized themselves, reviewed and judged the  entries submitted for the Dollar General Summer Reading Grants. These $1,000 grants were given to 20 YALSA members who were recognized for an outstanding proposal of teen-focused summer reading programs.    (more…)