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The mission of the Young Adult Library Services Association is to advocate, promote and strengthen service to young adults as part of the continuum of total library service, and to support those who provide service to this population.
Mission Moment
How Recent YALSA Activities Support the Association’s Mission and Strategic Plan
At YALSA’s Midwinter Meetings, the Board voted to create a member recognition award that will annually honor a committee chair, committee member, and/or member group for their work with and for YALSA during the previous year. YALSA Board member Stephanie Squicciarini has agreed to chair the ad hoc committee that will develop an award proposal to be presented to the Board at their Annual meetings in June. The creation of this Award directly supports YALSA’s mission to support those who provide service to teens and the member engagement and recruitment goal in the strategic plan. Thank you to Stephanie and her committee members for their work on this initiative.
Accomplishments
Following decisions made by the YALSA Board related to YALSA’s selected lists portfolio, I, and YALSA’s Executive Director, Beth Yoke, had a phone call with current chairs of the Association’s selection committees. The call provided the chairs with the opportunity to ask questions about the Board’s decisions and the work being done by the Association’s Organization & Bylaws Committee in order to create consistency in the policies and procedures of all of YALSA’s selected lists and awards.
As YALSA President I was invited to attend the Pew Research Center’s conference on Millennials. The conference focused on the just released Pew research report, Millennials: Confident, Connected, and Open to Change, which discusses the demographics and the political, social, technological, and religious life of 18 to 29 year olds. The data included in the report provides YALSA with information that is helpful in planning products and initiatives.
In 2010 seven YALSA Committees are transitioning to interest or discussion group status. In order to help chairs of the transitioning committees understand and plan for the transition, I held a conference call with them. During the call the chairs discussed the best way to elect conveners for, and get word out about, their groups. The chairs decided to sponsor a series of posts on the YALSA blog in order to help inform members about interest and discussion groups and to solicit convener nominations. It was also decided that all interest and discussion group conveners will be elected during the week of May 24. More information about these elections will be forthcoming this spring.
In February the YALSA Board held its winter meeting. The main focus of the meeting was to go over post-conference reports submitted by member group chairs following Midwinter Meetings in Boston. Along with the post-conference reports the Board also discussed:
- A request for Board action submitted by the Association’s Financial Advancement Committee. This request asked the Board to consider several financial initiatives for 2010. 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 creation of a Task Force that will develop a young adult services evaluation tool for use by library administrators and librarians in order to determine the success of their library’s full teen program.
More information on the Board meeting is available on the YALSA blog.
In Progress
YALSA’s Executive Director, Beth Yoke, and I held a conference call with Ben Carter, the Chair of the Website Advisory Committee, in order to discuss the For Members Only section of the Association’s web site. The Website Advisory Committee is currently looking at the content of the site and developing a proposal that will outline ideas to enable YALSA to use the For Members Only web site as successfully as possible in order to support the needs of Association members.
The 2010 YA Literature Symposium Task Force presented a proposal to the YALSA Board focusing on the ways in which online components could be integrated into the 2010 Symposium. Following Board discussion on this topic, I had a conference call with the Chair of the Committee, Heather Booth, Beth Yoke, and YALSA’s Program Officer, Nichole Gilbert, to discuss online components of the 2010 Symposium. The Task Force will be working with YALSA’s Website Advisory Committee to develop an online community, which will launch this spring, and will provide opportunities for discussion between those interested in the topic of the Symposium (diversity, literature, and teens), information about Symposium events, and host audio and video content produced at the 2010 event.
YALSA’s Program Clearinghouse Committee submitted the proposed slate of programs for Annual Conference 2011. The YALSA Board is currently reviewing the slate. Thank you to the Chair of the Program Clearinghouse Committee, Jodie Cleman, and the members of the Committee for their work on developing the slate.
YALSA Board member Jerene Battisti has agreed to chair a YALSA ad hoc committee that will look at the information YALSA needs to retain in order to maintain archival record of the Association’s work. Thank you to Jerene and the members of her committee for the work they have undertaken.
Media
Provided interviews on the Printz Award for several radio stations: The Vic McCarty Show on WMKT-AM, Kansas Public Radio, Texas State Networks, and WIP-AM, in Philadelphia.
Interviewed on teens and technology and Teen Tech Week by Lauren Barack for School Library Journal
Interviewed by Rocco Staino for a School Library Journal story on YALSA’s Great Ideas Contest.
YALSA News
Full information about YALSA’s 2010 YA Literature Symposium, that will be held November 5-7 in Albuquerque, New Mexico, is now available on the Association’s web site. The web site includes information about Symposium programs, housing, and registration. Registration for the Symposium opens April 1.
YALSA launches its webinar series on March 31 at 2 PM Eastern with a session on Getting Involved in YALSA. I’ll host the session which will cover how to become active in YALSA discussion and interest groups, committees, and publications, and how YALSA involvement can support the work that you do in your library. More information on YALSA webinars is available on the YALSA website.
March 12th is the deadline to submit Process Committee/Jury Volunteer Forms. Following the March 12 submission deadline, YALSA President-Elect Kim Patton, and the Committee Appointments Task Force will review the forms. Invitations to serve on process committees and juries will begin to be sent to appointees in late March. The invitation process will continue through the next few months.
YALSA is sponsoring two preconferences at Annual Conference. You do not need to register for Annual to register for these preconferences. The full-day preconference is titled It’s Perfectly Normal: Dealing with “Sensitive Topics in Teens Services.” The half-day preconference is titled Promoting Teen Reading with Web 2.0 Tools. Both programs take place on June 25 and you can learn more on the YALSA wiki.
