Latest YALSA Board News

The YALSA Board of Directors held their winter meeting via conference call on Thursday, February 25. The primary focus of this meeting was to go over post-conference reports from YALSA member group chairs. However, a few other items were discussed and acted on. These include:

• Establishment of a Teen Services Evaluation Task Force – the YALSA Board voted to form this task force that will be charged with creating a tool that library administrators and librarians can use in order to evaluate an individual institution’s overall level of success in providing teen services. The group working on the development of this tool will use YALSA’s recently revised Competencies for Librarians Serving Youth and the International Federation of Library Associations (IFLA) document Guidelines for Library Services for Young Adults to inform the development of criteria and the rating system used in the tool developed. The group will complete their work by summer 2010.
• Financial Advancement Plans (FAC) – YALSA’s Financial Advancement Committee (FAC) submitted a request for board action asking the Board to consider several activities for FAC, and YALSA, to focus on during the next year. The Board voted to move forward in three areas
  1. Begin a fundraising campaign titled “Give $10 in 10”
  2. Integrate a silent auction into the Midwinter 2011 Happy Hour
  3. Develop a pamphlet to be used to attract non-YALSA members to donate to YALSA

The Board did discuss the post-conference reports submitted by chairs of member groups. These reports are very helpful in providing the Board with information on the work of the groups, where things are going well, and when things aren’t going as well as desired. Board members will be following-up with some member group chairs in order to help move their work forward.

Another item on the agenda for this meeting was the proposed slate of programs for Annual Conference 2011. The Board did not have the opportunity to complete this discussion, it therefore continues in the Board’s space on ALA Connect. A thank you goes out to the Program Clearinghouse Committee who put together the proposed slate.

The agenda and supporting documents for the meeting are available on the YALSA web site.