YALSA President’s Report: November 2009

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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.

Accomplishments

Over the last month YALSA’s Executive Director, Beth Yoke, and I have participated in several calls with committee chairs to discuss ongoing and upcoming projects. These include a call with the incoming chair, John Sexton, of the 2011 YALSA Nominating Committee to talk abou the process of developing a YALSA slate for election 2011; the current Chair of the Research Committee, Rebecca Hunt, to discuss Research Committee activities in support of YALSA’s strategic plan; and the current Chair of the Division Membership and Promotion Committee, Candice Mack, to discuss the YALSA 201 event planned for Midwinter in Boston and YALSA’s continued efforts to recruit and engage members. I want to thank John, Rebecca, and Candice for their leadership in YALSA. Read More →

YALSA President’s Report: October 2009

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Accomplishments

  • Each fall YALSA’s Executive Committee meets in Chicago to discuss plans for the coming months. The meetings this year took place October 23 and 24 and the group talked about a range of topics including supporting and recognizing members in a recession, providing training for YALSA leadership, YALSA’s selected lists portfolio, and evaluation of the spending of Morris Endowment funds. Plans covered at the meetings are now being discussed by the full YALSA Board and will help in developing upcoming YALSA programs, services and opportunities. Read More →

YALSA Board of Directors Meeting, Nov. 11

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The YALSA Board of Directors will meet by conference call on Nov. 11 from 3-4 p.m. to discuss ALA policy changes regarding committee participation, and how those changes will impact YALSA. YALSA members who would like to sit in on the conference call can contact Letitia Smith at’  yalsa@ala.org to find out the phone number and password for the call.

Update: That’s 3-4 p.m. Eastern.

Post Fall Exec – Now What?

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In a previous post I wrote about ALA/YALSA Fall Exec, the time when the Executive Committees from ALA Divisions meet (individually) to plan for the upcoming months and year. Last weekend was the 2009 Fall Exec weekend and I wanted to follow-up the previous blog post with some information about discussions and plans. (As a reminder, all of the documents for Fall Exec are available to YALSA members in the Members Only section of the Association web site.) Read More →

Fall Exec: What’s That?

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Every fall the executive committees of ALA divisions meet in Chicago in order to plan for the upcoming months and year. The weekend of meetings is often referred to as Fall Exec and this year’s meetings take place this weekend.

For YALSA, the Executive Committee (made up of the president, president-elect, immediate past president, secretary, fiscal officer and division councilor) meets on Friday morning and all day Saturday. On Friday afternoon YALSA’s Executive Committee members join with other division leaders at a large group meeting to talk about ALA’s strategic plan. Read More →

YALSA President’s Report: September 2009

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During the past month I have continued to work with YALSA’s Executive Director, Beth Yoke, the Executive Committee, and Board members on programs and services of the Association.

Accomplishments

  • As a part of ALA’s strategic planning process Division Executive Directors and Presidents, Roundtable representatives, along with ALA Executive Board members and some ALA staff members participated in a strategic planning retreat. The planning was facilitated by Paul Meyer of the Tecker Consulting Group. During the retreat sessions participants discussed ALA’s mission, vision, and goals for the future. Over the next few months ideas developed at the retreat and at follow-up ALA meetings will be released for feedback to members and member groups.
  • Each fall members of ALA Division Executive Committees meet in Chicago to discuss plans for the coming year. Over the past few weeks I’ve worked with YALSA Executive Director Beth Yoke on the agenda and support materials for meetings of YALSA’s Executive Committee. Read More →

YALSA President’s Report: July 15 – August 31, 2009

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There’s been a lot of activity at YALSA since Annual Conference. In my six weeks as the President, I’ve had the chance to speak with many members, work on projects with fellow Executive Committee and Board members, and plan for future events and programs.

Accomplishments

  • Following discussions at Annual about BBYA in particular and modernizing YALSA’s selected lists in general, the YALSA Executive Committee discussed, via phone, next steps in developing a proposal, to be fine-tuned at Fall Executive Committee Meeting. An overview of the information from that conversation is available as a pdf file.
  • The work of YALSA’s committees/juries/taskforces goes on year-round. Read More →

YALSA Board – Hard At Work

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Yesterday, YALSA’s hard-working Board of Directors met, via conference call, to go over committee post-conference reports and follow-up on a few other items that they’ve been working on. The full agenda and documents for the meeting are available on the YALSA web site in the For Members Only section. (A member login is required to access the documents.)

In this post I want to highlight a few of the items from the meeting:

  • The YALSA Board agreed to update the charge for the Division’s Strategic Planning Committee. This is a standing committee for YALSA (which means it always exists) but at times when the Division is not actually working on a strategic plan it can be difficult for the group to continue their work. Read More →

A Month in the Life of a YALSA President

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In late July, a second round of A Day in the Life of a Library, launched. As I read posts librarians wrote for this project about how they spend their days as librarians, I started thinking how I spend my time as YALSA President. And, while it’s not a 9 to 5 job as is that of many librarians, it is something that I spend at least a bit of time on every day. I thought to myself, what about a blog post on a month in the life of a YALSA President?

It’s just over a month since I took on the job of YALSA President, and I can’t quite believe both that it’s been that long and all the conversations I’ve had about YALSA with a variety of people in that time. Don’t worry, this post isn’t going to go through every day of my first month as YALSA President, Read More →

Librarian Demographics

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If you offer me a choice between going to a conference program and observing the work of a committee or board…I’ll pick the committee’  and board stuff almost every time. You’ll find debate, controversy, and loads of interesting discussions.

Yesterday, I observed the ALA Executive Board. They had a pretty interesting agenda, including a report on librarian demographics. It was fascinating stuff and merits discussion amongst a wider audience.

The demographers have not compiled their findings into a final report, and it will probably be a while before we see their interpretations. I’ll walk you through the slides, but keep in mind…while the numbers aren’t completely raw, you might consider them still medium-rare. Read More →