Don’t forget that deadline to submit your volunteer form if you want be considered for an appointment on a YALSA Process Committee is quickly approaching. Volunteer forms are due Friday, March 12, 2010.
If you are new to YALSA, a Process Committee, Jury, or Advisory Board can be an excellent way to get to get your feet wet and begin to learn how member groups work. There are nearly 30 different Process Committees, Juries & Advisory Boards ranging from Legislation to Teen Read Week so it is easy to find a group that fits your interests. A complete list of YALSA Process Committees, Juries, & Advisory Boards is available on the YALSA website. In order to serve on one of these groups, you need to be appointed by me, the President-Elect.
If you have not yet decided which committee you are interested in, don’t forget to first do some background work and find out about the working charges of each group by checking the YALSA web site for a description of each group. You may also want to contact the Chair of the group and ask him or her questions. Chair information is also available on the YALSA website.
When you have completed your research and decided which committee is the best fit for you, the next step is to fill out a volunteer form. The form is available at http://yalsa.ala.org/forms/form.php and is due no later than March 12, 2010, for this round of appointments.
Once you fill out your volunteer form, you will receive an automated reply from the YALSA office acknowledging the receipt of your form. After that acknowledgment has been sent, you will not hear from me or my Appointments Taskforce before I begin making appointments in mid March. Beginning in mid-March appointment invitations will be sent by email from the YALSA office. Because most of the communication will take place by email, it is important that your email is set up so that it can receive messages from YALSA, including yalsa@ala.org. All spring appointments will be filled by May 7.
New this year: at the 2010 Midwinter Meeting, YALSA’s Board voted to convert all Process Committees, Juries & Advisory Boards into 100% virtual groups. In other words, individuals will not be required to travel to conferences in order to participate on these groups. This means that the groups will now be doing most of their work and communicating in a virtual environment and group members must be comfortable using web 2.0 tools such as ALA Connect. This change was made because ALA modified its committee participation policy, freeing Divisions up to do the same.
Please contact me if you have any questions or need more information. Thank you for your willingness to lend your time and talents to YALSA!
