YALSA Advocacy: Resources to Stop Anti-AAPI Hate

by

On March 3, 2021, the Asian/Pacific American Librarian Association issued a statement condemning the attacks against Asian Americans due to racist misconceptions of the COVID-19 pandemic. The Young Adult Library Services Association wishes to join their sister organization in condemning these horrid attacks, and if you have civically-minded teenagers at your library, offer resources for them to take action themselves.

YALSA recognizes and strongly condemns the rise in anti-Asian hate crimes that have grown in intensity over the past year due to hate speech directed at the Asian community. Here at YALSA, we believe no one should be discriminated against due to their race, sexual orientation, or gender identity.

How can teen librarians support their patrons, and encourage teens of all races to stand up for each other? One of the most important issues can be recognizing racism, and figuring out what to do about it in the moment. Hollaback, a non-profit organization, has been offering free online trainings for how to disrupt and intervene when someone witnesses racism. This can be the first resource librarians hand out. While that training touches on the troubled history American has with Chinese immigrants, this article also provides a brief history, beginning with the way Chinese immigrants were painted as dirty and infectious to stir up anti-immigrant feelings and eventually exclude Chinese immigrants from voting or owning land.

Librarians can also host programs on racism. While her upcoming program isn’t specifically geared towards anti-AAPI racism, teen librarian Kim Iacucci from Fort Lee Library expects that it will come up naturally. She has scheduled a program titled Changing The World One Click At A Time: Teens And Activism In The Social Media Age. Fort Lee is a heavily Asian-American city right outside New York City, and held a Stop Asian Hate rally that drew a large crowd. She’s also working on a program for the library that’s about anti-Asian racism for all ages. 

Every teen should be able to come to the library and feel safe and protected. Being able to intervene, or even say that we see their struggle could mean the world to a teen struggling through the strangest year of their lives.

 

Posted by Stacey Shapiro, YALSA Board Advocacy.

ALA Midwinter 2019: Trying it on for size

by

Although I have been at an ALA Annual conference, I had never before attended an ALA Midwinter. It’s comfortable enough if you’ve been at the larger conferences, because it feels more compact, and yet there’s still so much going on that it’s impossible to choose between sessions. At first glance, you might think many of the meetings are only for committees and roundtables . What is there for a a normal, first-time attendee to enjoy? The beauty of Midwinter lies in the fact that you can attend many of these meetings. Many roundtable, division, or Board meetings are open to the public, and they love seeing new faces. As part of my Emerging Leaders group, I attended the Board meeting for the International Relations Round Table. It’s a great way to see how these divisions work and test out the ones you’re interested in joining.

Tomi Adeyemi at the Morris presentation

Not only that, but YALSA had some excellent programming at Midwinter. The Best Fiction for Young Adults Teen Feedback Session is not to be missed. Local teens are invited to a lunch with authors, and then tell the BFYA committee their thoughts on the BFYA list! It was great hearing actual teens talk about  the books we hope they love and seeing how our perspectives fit together.

I also had the privilege of attending the Youth Media Awards and the Morris and Nonfiction Presentation. Being in the room where it happens was magical, and the  crowd was electric. After that, I got to meet some of my favorite debut authors at the Morris presentation! The presentation also comes with a number of free books, so it’s a worthwhile addition to any conference registration.

The hall for the Youth Media Awards

Overall, Midwinter is a joy to attend because it’s so much smaller and easier to navigate than Annual. If you’re nervous about attending such a big conference, definitely try a Midwinter first!

I Love My Librarian Award Spotlight: Sheikla Blount

by

I recently had the opportunity to talk to Sheikla Blount, library media specialist at Columbiana Middle School in Columbiana, Alabama. Ms. Blount was recently named one of the recipients of the I Love My Librarian Award.  The award is a collaborative program of Carnegie Corporation of New York, the New York Public Library, The New York Times and the American Library Association.  A graduate of Alabama State University in Montgomery, Alabama, Sheikla clearly has a passion for libraries and children. She’s involved in the middle school, even outside the library, and the sponsor for the Junior United Nations Assembly and yearbook club. Read More →

What I Learned From My First Summer Learning Program

by

My goal for this summer was to create a teen summer learning program at the library, because we didn’t have a dedicated teen services librarian before.

My first lesson was easy: I tried too much. I’m still trying to connect with the teens so there were usually multiple events a week in July.

I am a department of one, with the children’s department happy to assist when they are also not busy. Next year, I need to take a look at the broader theme of the summer, plan a few special events, and a few more low-key events that I can manage on my own. There were some truly large events that I have to re-examine for next year, and some smaller ones that I’ll consider not doing again. By the end of July, I had run myself ragged, and I still had most of a month of programming left to do.

But looking back at what I did accomplish, there is a lot that worked for my teens and my area. Taking some ideas from “Adopting a Summer Learning Approach” by Beth Yoke, I had created a space in my library where teens could learn in a safe, fun environment over the summer.

I spent six months crafting my STEAMPower Camp, a week-long program whose purpose was to encourage young women in middle school to try different STEM activities. We had women in STEM fields come in, physically or virtually, every day to talk about different STEM career paths, and plenty of experiments to keep them busy.

The girls, who already knew each other from school, were quick to join in teamwork to surpass my challenges. There were girls who had a little more trouble than others working in teams, but I could set one of my older teen volunteers with them to smooth things over. They learned to work in teams, and to experiment and see how many different fields of science they could go into.

However, it took a lot out of me. And the most important thing I learned was to plan for breaks in the summer. Just a day when I didn’t have a program or something to plan, and that I could take a breath and do the other parts of a one-person department like read review journals and order books, or catalog them.

Regular life has to go on during the summer, and no matter how excited I was for it, there was the regular part of librarianship that had to go on while I was doing bigger and better programs. Next summer, I’ll have a cataloging assistant, which will certainly help, and I’ll know better than to plan 20 programs in one month.

How’d your summer programs go?

 

Proposing a Program at ALA Annual

by

ALA’s Annual Conference is over for this year, and library workers are back home, energized and ready to dive into summer learning or planning for the coming school year.  It’s also time to sit back and reflect on what made a good annual conference this year, besides the obvious things (IMHO) like hearing Hillary Clinton as the closing speaker. What panels spoke out to you? Which ones did you feel gave you the most actionable know-how to take home and try out that very next week? And things we like to think less about here at YALSA, but what didn’t work so well? Why didn’t you like a certain panel? Were the panelists too rote? Too unimaginative?

Read More →

NJ Makers Day: A Teen Librarian’s Perspective

by

Instead of Teen Tech Week, my library is participating in NJ Makers Day. It’s a statewide initiative brought about by a grant three years ago, and now it’s a nonprofit dedicated to the spirit of making in New Jersey. It’s approaching fast on March 25, and my library is just about prepared for it. I just recently finished my MLIS at Rutgers, and this is my first full-time library position at Tenafly in New Jersey. I had been involved with Makers Day before as a part timer, so I wanted to involve my new library as well, a first for the town. Along with the children’s librarian here, I’m planning a full day of events for teens, kids, and adults alongside 299 other locations across the state. It’s the biggest NJ Makers Day yet, and I felt it was important to introduce the community to the idea that the library can be involved in making and STEM education.

Read More →

A Call to Action for Graphic Novels

by

The New York Times shocked its readership when it announced that it was losing some of its bestsellers lists, including the graphic novels bestsellers list. It’s a devastating loss for librarians and graphic novelists alike. There has been a public outcry among graphic novelists, although there has been division even amongst the voices speaking out. Newer bestselling authors like Raina Telgemeier lay out the reasons why it disappoints her, while Neil Gaiman proudly proclaims that he never needed a separate list when Sandman first came out.

Read More →

Storify of #yalsa16

by

There were many, many tweets that I could have included in this Storify, but these have helpful information, tweets of librarians bonding at #yalsa16, and pictures of a little Hermione Funko Pop that could have honestly had her own Storify because she seemed to meet every author in attendance. I encourage you to still scroll through the hashtags on Twitter, because I might not have caught something that you were interested in, but I mean this simply as a resource to collect the tweets about 2016 YALSA Symposium, and hope that it’s useful for anyone who did not get to attend.

View the story “#yalsaleftbehind” on Storify

#YALSAleftbehind

by

It is an unfortunate truth that we can’t make it to every conference we want to go to, even if it’s only a few hours away. Cost, travel, time away from work, family obligations, what have you keep us from going to conferences to see our colleagues, attend panels, and meet vendors for our libraries. But fear not! You’re not the only one #yalsalaeftbehind.

It doesn’t mean that you have to entirely miss out, either. Twitter is a great way to keep connected with other library staff in the field, and it’s no different when it comes to following panels at these conferences. You can still connect with the attendees and network online as they livetweet the panels that they’re attending. Most tweets will be tagged with #yalsa16 so they’ll be easy to find, and each session will have its own hashtag as well, to more easily filter through the results. We do love filtering, don’t we?

Even if you’re not attending but interested, make sure to look through a program list, to see what sessions would have interested you the most. Do you know anyone going? Will they be attending certain panels and take notes for you? Even if you don’t have that luxury, I have a handy list of hashtags for each session.

Read More →