Volunteer for Award, Selection & Strategic Committees and Taskforces!

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*Please note that the PPYA and Amazing Audiobooks Committees are virtual. YALSA members with book selection and evaluation experience and who are comfortable working in an online environment with tools like ALA Connect, Google Docs, Skype, etc. should put their names forward for consideration.

Past-President Chris Shoemaker noted in his blog post last month that the YALSA Board adopted a new policy about serving on YALSA award committees (Alex, Edwards, Morris, Nonfiction, Odyssey & Printz).  Beginning Feb. 1, 2016, any individual who has served on any YALSA award committee will need to wait two years before they are eligible to serve on another YALSA award committee.

If you have been on selection and award committees before, please consider volunteering for the new Selection and Award Committees Oversight Committee (more info can be found in this board document).  This new committee needs experienced YALSA members to serve as liaisons and to standardize policies and procedures for selection and award committees.

The Fine Print

  • Eligibility: To be considered for an appointment, you must be a current personal member of YALSA and submit a Committee Volunteer form by Oct. 1, 2015. If you are appointed, service will begin on Feb. 1, 2016.
  • If you are currently serving on a selection or award committee and you are eligible to and interested in serving for another term, you must fill out a volunteer form for this round (so I know you’re still interested and want to do serve another term)
  • Qualifications: Serving on a committee or taskforce is a significant commitment. Please review the resources on this web page before you submit a form to make sure that committee work is a good fit for you at this point in time.
  • Need more information? Click on the links above. Check out the Committee FAQ.  Watch the Selection Committee Webinar.
  • Please free to contact me with any questions or issues at gsarahthelibrarian at gmail .com.

Thanks for volunteering with YALSA!

Are you Taskforce ready?

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Wowsers is right, the ALA Annual meeting was an action-packed few days for the YALSA Board. Several Board members will be sharing background and information on select proposals that were brought forth over the course of the next few weeks, so please stay tuned. Obviously I’m a bit of a governance nerd myself, but I hope you’ll find that the processes and paths that the Board follows to come to these decisions are almost as thoughtful and interesting as the results themselves. I said it once and I’ll say it again: your YALSA Board volunteers are awesomesauce.

Part of my follow-up over the course of the next few months will be to madly appoint to some amazing new taskforces. Either as a newer member looking for a way to get more involved or as a seasoned vet ready to share your expertise, this could be you! Check out the taskforce descriptions below and if interested, please fill out a volunteer form.’ ‘ The more information you can give me related to the group(s) that you’re interested in serving on, the easier it will be for me to place you. And remember, if you aren’t selected in this round of taskforce appointments, President-Elect Chris Shoemaker will soon be perusing selection committee volunteer forms which are due September 30th.’ ‘ Thanks for considering!
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Update to Changes on Website

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In February, I posted about changes that were made to YALSA’s website that required a login to reach the selected lists and awards. I explained the rationale and indicated that there would be refinements in the process.

There have been refinements, but we haven’t done a very good job of sharing that information with you, so I want to apologize for that lack of timely communication and try to remedy it now.

First of all, I do apologize for the early glitches and for the unfriendliness of ALA’s web interface. It can be very discouraging to click on a link that says “login” and immediately get an “access denied” message. However, if you just click on the ALA login link in the upper right corner of the screen, all will be well. Read More →

For the Love of Lists

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It seems to me that it is in the nature of librarians to be interested in lists. Lists are a way of cataloging, qualifying, and creating memorable criteria- information that can be retrieved later- about a topic. This is similar to the way we approach our collections. What better way to organize and remember all of the books we want to share? Or apps? Or other resources? See, I’m making a list already.
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Got reluctant readers?

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Posted by Teri Lesesne

The Quick Picks Committee has been busy here at midwinter. With hundreds of nominated titles to consider, our fearless leader, Jamie Watson, has kept us on task as we talk about the reaction of our readers to the books. Of course, we also insert our own thoughts and feelings into the proceedings as each member of the committee has also read each nominated title. The meetings are open to the conference participants who are encouraged to talk about any of the titles they have seen reluctant readers gravitate toward or reject. Tomorrow we will cast our votes for each book, write annotations for the titles, and begin thinking of which books we will nominate for the 2007 list.