It’s been a bit busy since October, but I still wanted to get this posted, especially since it impacts a lot of what the YALSA Board does at Midwinter, and Midwinter is fast approaching!
In October YALSA’s Executive Committee gathered in Chicago for two and a half days of meetings. The first day was a great chance to work across divisions, roundtables and ALA with presidents, president-elects, and past presidents, as well as ALA staff. Like YALSA, ALA is currently doing strategic planning, and that was the focus of our work together. The new plan from ALA will focus on three areas: advocacy, information policy and professional development. You can learn more and join the discussion in ALA Connect.
Once that was done, the Executive Committee focused on issues impacting YALSA. That included:
- Moving to an outcomes based approach to planning and assessment in YALSA
- Getting the new Margaret Edwards Trust up and running and discussing its potential for funding literacy related projects
- Prioritizing next steps for the association based on the recommendations in the report, “The Future of Library Services for and with Teens: a Call to Action”
- Talking about best practices in change management and how to incorporate them into the work of the Board
- Reviewing a report from the Student Member Engagement Taskforce
- Analyzing YALSA member survey results and discussing implications the results have on YALSA’s next round of strategic planning
- Reviewing a draft of YALSA’s upcoming Programming Guidelines, which we anticipate will be finalized by February
- Making preliminary plans for strategic planning activities for the Board and for members at the ALA Midwinter Meeting
The full agenda and accompanying documents are available in the Governance section of the web site for you to review. No final decisions were made, as the Executive Committee isn’t a decision making body, but these discussions will help inform future Board meetings and decision making. Many of these same topics will be on the Board’s agenda for Midwinter. In some cases the Executive Committee might choose to write up a request for Board action about an issue or idea that came out of the October discussions.
Right now, YALSA’s Board is developing the agenda for our meetings at Midwinter, and I’m busy asking Board members to complete documents or help address agenda items. If you have any ideas for agenda items or requests for board action, please contact me by the end of December. Once the agenda is finalized in January, I’ll share a blog post with you highlighting some of the issues and topics on the agenda.
Please don’t hesitate to contact me if you have any questions or comments.
