Often, the YALSA board meeting agenda needs weaning because there isn’t enough time to cover all agenda topics or there are certain actions that need to taken before Midwinter or Annual. Last week was one of those times. The YALSA Board voted to update some of the policies and procedures for the Popular Paperbacks for Young Adults committee to make the book lists more helpful for librarians serving today’s teens. See the board document in the Midwinter consent agenda.
In some ways selection and award committees operate independently of YALSA’s overall strategic direction. With the creation of the Selection and Award Committees Oversight Committee (chaired by Angela Carstensen), YALSA has the opportunity to ensure that committees like PPYA develop resources that support a teens first approach and that further YALSA’s strategic directions. Building the PPYA list around the needs of teens and YALSA strategic priorities will ultimately better serve library staff who work for and with teens.
The new Selection and Award Oversight Committee begins its work Feb. 1, 2016, and one of the first items on the agenda will be to approve the book lists topics that the PPYA committee will work on during the year. Previously, this was a task that the outgoing PPYA committee worked on, but now it will be accomplished after Feb. 1 by the new committee. Every year, some PPYA committee members carryover, so there will be discussions about what topics were considered the previous year. The new policy states that “another focus for themes that each committee should explore are titles aimed at a particular underserved or emerging teen audiences. Each committee should also seek out opportunities to tie their committee’s work to relevant YALSA initiatives, especially ones with annual themes that could be supported by PPYA, such as the YA Services Symposium and Teen Read Week™.”
The board is excited to see what lists the PPYA committee creates! Look for the list titles this Spring and don’t forget that you can help to create the lists by nominating titles via the webform that will be located on this page of the previous PPYA lists. You can check out the updated policy on the PPYA webpage. As always, please contact me if you have questions–hope to see you in Boston!
