News from New Literacies Online Course

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Posted by Linda W. Braun

This is the first week of YALSA’s online course – New Literacies for Young Adults. We started on Monday and the full class – 28 students in all – has been discussing, creating, and participating. As I’ve been teaching the class and communicating with students, I’ve been thinking a lot about all the reading and writing required in order to participate in anything online. For example, this week one of the topics up for discussion is My Space. Students in the class have been discussing how to setup My Space accounts, troubleshooting My Space glitches, and considering how and why community environments like My Space appeal to teenagers. In order to do that we’ve all be reading and writing constantly.

At the same time I’ve been thinking about all of the new cool sites I keep finding out about. These include, Pandora which is a very interesting music streaming site and Newsvine which is a site that aggregates news and gives members the chance to write articles for the site.

No matter where I turn to look at technology that teens and adults use, I’m bombarded with text and I’m given the chance to write down my own ideas about the resource I’m checking out. Literacy is not a thing of the past, that’s for sure. The ways we read and write might change, but the actual act of reading and writing live on stronger than ever – I would say.

Candidate Forum for President-Elect

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Posted by Amy Alessio

Let’s begin by asking both of our candidates for President-Elect, Paula Brehm-Heeger and Allen Nichols about their experience within YALSA and ALA. Please tell readers about what positions you have held in our organization and in the larger ALA structure.

Then follow that up by letting readers know which of those positions was your favorite and why, as well as which gave you the most important skills to use as YALSA President and why.

Welcome to the Elections Section

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Posted by Amy Alessio

Welcome to the YALSA Elections blog! Only about 15% of members vote in our annual elections, yet decisions affect everyone. So please use this forum as a chance to learn about candidates and issues for the spring ballot.

As moderator of this section of the blog, I will be posting questions for the President Elect category, then other elected positions and finally about issues to go on the ballot. The candidates will post their responses to these questions. YALSA members are also welcome to follow up on their responses with further questions.

We encourage lively discussion and debate as appropriate to the topic, but of course no personal comments or attacks will be allowed.

The Way Teens Find Information

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Posted by Linda W. Braun

Over the past couple of weeks I’ve been thinking a lot about Rupert Murdoch and what he said about searching when he bought the company that owns My Space. (You can check out Murdoch’s My Space space.) At that time Murdoch was quoted as saying that teens use their online social networks to find information instead of going to search engines – like Google.

Then yesterday I listened to the Diggnation podcast. The podcast hosts talked about Yahoo! While Yahoo! is not the number one search engine or search tool of choice for lots of people, Yahoo! has recently purchased several technologies (Flickr for example.) that help place them in the future as the social networking search tool of choice.

The Diggnation hosts talked about how in the not so distant future more and more people are going to want to find information that others have already vetted in some way. For example, perhaps a teen wants to find information on a topic of either personal or academic interest. The teen might do a search on Yahoo! or Google and get a results list that isn’t organized within a relevant framework for the teen looking for the information. In this case what I mean by relevant is that the results have been “reviewed” by others with like interests and needs – family, friends, and so on.

This reminded me of research cited in Mary K. Chelton and Colleen Cool’s book Youth Information Seeking Behavior. In the final chapter on drug related information seeking behaviors of adolescent girls, it is noted that friends are often the first information gathering source for these teenagers.

Within the online search framework that would then mean that teens would want to find resources from within their online social networks. Those are people who they choose to connect with via My Space, Live Journal, 43 Things, and so on. If this is the search wave of today and the near future can librarians jump onto the wave with their websites and library catalogs? What will it take to do that?

RSS Feeds

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Posted by Linda W. Braun

If you are a regular reader of this blog you might want to use the RSS feeds to keep up with new posts and comments. If you haven’t used RSS feeds before this is a perfect opportunity to get started with them. You could find that feeds help you keep up with what’s happening on topics in which you are interested. I subscribe to lots of technology and library feeds and through them I quickly and easily find out about new and interesting developments in those fields.

Library websites incorporate RSS feeds so users get information about what’s happening in the library pushed to them. Database vendors are beginning to integrate RSS. With RSS enabled databases, researchers get notified when new information is added to the database on a specific research topic.

To subscribe to feeds you need a feed reader – you can use something that’s web-based or a special piece of software. Find out more about RSS and how you can use it read Will Richardson’s RSS Quick Start Guide for Educators.

Social Networking

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Posted by Linda W. Braun

This week the Pew Internet in American Life Project came out with a report on the impact of technology on social networks. While the report isn’t specifically about teens, there are several topics within the document that relate to the way teens use technology and what they will expect from technology when they become adults.

The report describes two types of networks/ties. They are:

Core Ties: These are the people in Americans’ social networks with whom they have very close relationships — the people to whom Americans turn to discuss important matters, with whom they are in frequent contact, or from whom they seek help. This approach captures three key dimensions of relationship strength — emotional intimacy, contact, and the availability of social network capital.

Significant Ties: These are the people outside that ring of “core ties” in Americans’ social networks, who are somewhat closely connected. They are the ones with whom Americans to a lesser extent discuss important matters, are in less frequent contact, and are less apt to seek help. They may do some or all of these things, but to a lesser extent. Nevertheless, although significant ties are weaker than core ties, they are more than acquaintances, and they can become important players at times as people access their networks to get help or advice.

As I read this I thought about how teens use websites like My Space, along with blogs, to build and support their social networks. Do teens think about the differences within the social networks they build? I’m not sure they could articulate differences, but I bet they use online tools in different ways in order to create core and significant ties.

Flickr Photos Now Available

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I have posted some candid snapshots from the All Committee Meeting and from the Awards Press Conference to my Flickr account. Go see YALSA and its members in action.

Posted by Teri Lesesne

Still working in San Antonio

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Posted by Teri Lesesne

Though the exhibit halls look like ghost towns, and many participants are now home and busily unpacking their ARCS from their overstuffed luggage, some work still remains for the folks on various YALSA Committees. My roomie and I head off shortly for the final meeting of the Quick Picks List for 2006. Today we cast our final votes for the books, write annotations to go along with the titles, and settle on our Top Ten Books.

Other committees are meeting as well so that soon members can access BBYA and Notable and other important collection development lists. Of course, YALSA officers and Board Members are still meeting to plan for New Orleans and beyond. Get involved and see how it all works behind the scenes at ALA and YALSA.

May I have the envelope, please?

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Posted by Teri Lesesne

There was a palpable thrill in the air of Hall C as Pam Spencer Holley opened the first ever live web cast of the awards ceremony known as the Oscars of the juvenile literature world. Librarians and publishers mingled before being called to order with lots of us getting in our last picks for winning titles before the actual announcements.

After viewing footage from the forthcoming Pura Belpre video that celebrates the 10th anniversary of this award, President Michael Gorman opened the ceremonies by announcing the winners of the Schneider Family Award. (for a full list of awards: http://news.ala.org/releases/announce.html). ALEX Awards were announced and then it was time for what all the YALSA folks had been anticipating since the beginning of conference: the winners of the Margaret A. Edwards Award and the Printz winners.

Pam Spencer Holley’s announcement of Jacqueline Woodson as the recipient of the 2006 MAE Award we met with much enthusiasm. Printz winners came next, again to thunderous applause. (List of Winners.)

After announcements for all the awards were made, we scurried off to call friends and colleagues. Immediately, the listservs lit up with the post announcement discussion also known as Monday morning quarterbacking. It was an incredibly exciting way to start a day here in San Antonio.

ALA Web Advisory Committee

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Posted by Linda W. Braun

Today I attended my first meeting of the “big” ALA Web Advisory Committee. (I am the YALSA rep. to the Committee.) One of the things that was discussed was that YALSA is the first ALA Division to be using blog software hosted on the ALA server. Other Divisions have blogs but we are the first to have the blog integrated into the ALA structure. ALA staff members did mention that other Divisions could do the same thing.

We also talked about ALA’s Online Communities. ALA staff is waiting to announce the Communities to the larger ALA world until the larger divisions are integrated fully into the Community environment.

There was a presentation from ALA publications about the different electronic publications that exist or are in the works. There is a new enewsletter for subscribers to American Libraries (if you don’t want to get the enewsletter you need to opt-out.) Booklist is going to be available online via subscription and there are several books that are being revised that will have online versions. I hadn’t realized that text chapters are available for download from some third party vendors. I’ll have to check that out.

American Libraries, ACRL, and HRDR are working on an online career center. It will allow employers to post job ads and employees to post resumes. (That’s just some of what will be available.) It sounds like the resource will be ALA’s version of Monster.com. Not a bad thing to have access to.

Sitting through the meeting it seemed to me that past mistakes have been taken to heart. It sounds like there is a good process in place for ALA to use to determine website needs and how to handle those needs. It also seems like they are very aware of the amount of testing that is needed in order to achieve success.