Hello there! My name is Joel Shoemaker and I’m the new chair of the Financial Advancement Committee for YALSA. I’m very excited about this new endeavor and thought I’d utilize this opportunity to introduce you to our charge and our committee members. 

If you’ve never heard of it, the Financial Advancement Committee supports the Friends of YALSA and works to create and implement various fundraising efforts, both virtually and, when the time comes, at in-person conferences and events! This work is an effort to support scholarships and stipends that YALSA gives out annually.

We are a small but mighty group! Here is a bit about a few of our members:

Angelique Kopa is a Collection Development selector for the Baltimore County Public Library in Maryland. She loves serving YALSA and ALSC by volunteering for committees and is also a committee member for ALSC’s Children and Technology committee. In her free time, she enjoys being active and doing anything outdoors.

Celeste Swanson (she/her) is the Youth Services Coordinator for the Lane Libraries in Ohio. In addition to the Financial Advancement Committee, she also serves as chair of the Selection List Oversight Committee. She is currently reading (and loving!) Firekeeper’s Daughter by Angeline Boulley. 

Yvette Garcia has served in various roles throughout her career with Chicago Public Library, with nearly twenty years of experience advocating for patrons of all ages in libraries. Outside of CPL, Yvette has contributed to the field of librarianship by taking on leadership roles with the young adult division of ALA, YALSA. Additionally, she has presented in a variety of settings and topics. Yvette graduated with an MLIS from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a B.A. in Economics from Knox College. 

As for me, I’m the library director for the Illinois Prairie District Public Library and a magician. I’m in my second year of a three-year term on the Rebecca Caudill Committee, which is a statewide committee that chooses books for fourth through eighth graders to vote on a favorite each year! I’m married and have a dog named Maximus. One day, I long to have a smaller dog called Minimus.

We’re looking very forward to serving our members this year!

As a part of the Organizational Plan, YALSA renewed the Interest Group model to provide an easy way for members to get involved. If you are looking for a simple way to find members in your area, or who are aligned with your passion, consider joining or starting an Interest Group.  Unlike committees, these are not appointed.  Members can opt into them any time, and there is no minimum commitment of work or requirement to attend conferences.

Interest Groups are grassroots and member-driven so if you are passionate about something that doesn’t yet have an Interest Group, making one is easy! Work with the Executive Director to develop a petition, get 15 signatures from members who want to be a part of the group, and submit your proposal to YALSA’s Board of Directors. Next, plan a meet-up or make virtual space to engage community members.

We currently have six Interest Groups ranging from local area groups to topics on mental health and picture books for teens. At Midwinter, the YALSA Board of Directors will be revisiting a plan on how we can best encourage and support the Interest Groups. Originally presented in 2017 the plan lays out a year and half of work to support and grow Interest Groups from the simple, like quarterly messages to members advertising the opportunity, to the much more complex, like a manual for Interest Group conveners.

The Board will hear an update on the plan thus far, and moving forward we will discuss how we define success for Interest Groups, what steps YALSA can take to set Interest Groups up for success, and we can best promote Interest Groups to members.

If you are a member of an Interest Group, or thinking about starting one, we would love to hear from you what you think. Leave a comment or send me an email and let me know. See the full agenda of the Board of Directors at ALA Midwinter in Denver. All Board meetings are open to attendees, and you can learn more about the Board meetings on the wiki.

 

What is the YALSA Board? What do they do? Who is on the YALSA Board? These could be questions you may have and if they are you’ve come to the right place. Each month, two YALSA Board of Directors are interviewed and their responses are shared here in order to help members get to know more about the Board members, the Board itself and things the Board is working on.

YALSA’s board of directors has the principal responsibility for fulfillment of YALSA’s mission and the legal accountability for its operations. The board has specific fiduciary duties of care, loyalty, and obedience to the law. As a group they are in charge of:
– establishing a clear organizational mission
– forming the strategic plan to accomplish the mission
– overseeing and evaluating the plan’s success
– hiring a competent executive director
– providing adequate supervision and support to the executive director

This month meet Derek Ivie, Youth Services Coordinator for the Suffolk Cooperative Library System

What drew you to the Board?

I have been a part of YALSA since I was a student in library school and have always wanted to be involved. As a student, I used it as a resource to stay on top of trends in library services for teens. Once I graduated and became a full-fledged librarian my roles have been solely on Award and Selection committees – once chairing Quick Picks and most recently as a member of the 2016 Michael L. Printz Award committee. Just this past year I realized that I wanted to be more involved in bringing those things I found so valuable to fruition and decided to run for a position.

What do you do on the board?

My role on the Board is Board Member at Large. I participate in monthly online chats, meetings at Annual and Midwinter, am part of the Advocacy Standing Committee, and act as Liaison to two different taskforces: the YA Symposium Taskforce and the Annual Conference Marketing & Local Arrangements Taskforce. So far it has been a great learning about what is happening nationally in libraries and services for teens. Being Board Member at Large is a fantastic way to connect with YALSA members from throughout the country.

What is the board doing for its members?

YALSA’s Board and staff are constantly working on bringing powerful programming to its members (virtually and in person at ALA Conferences and at the Literature Symposium), creating helpful tools (like our Advocacy Toolkit and brand new Teen Literacies Toolkit), as well as working hard to advocate on behalf of young adult librarians and the importance of our services to teens on a national level (see how you can get involved in District Days).

What I’m Reading:

I am currently listening to Avenged by Amy Tintera which is the sequel to the fantasy Ruined.

 

What is the YALSA Board? What do they do? Who is on the YALSA Board? These could be questions you may have and if they are you’ve come to the right place. Each month, two YALSA Board of Directors are interviewed and their responses are shared here in order to help members get to know more about the Board members, the Board itself and things the Board is working on.

YALSA’s board of directors has the principal responsibility for fulfillment of YALSA’s mission and the legal accountability for its operations. The board has specific fiduciary duties of care, loyalty, and obedience to the law. As a group they are in charge of:
– establishing a clear organizational mission
– forming the strategic plan to accomplish the mission
– overseeing and evaluating the plan’s success
– hiring a competent executive director
– providing adequate supervision and support to the executive director

This month meet Kate McNair, Teen Services Coordinating Librarian, Johnson County Library and YALSA Board of Directors member.

What drew you to the Board?
I became interested in board work when I was chair of the Financial Advancement Committee (this was before FAC chair was an ex-officio member of the board). My board liaison, Pam Spencer Holly, was someone I really looked up to. She asked me if running for the Board was something I was interested in, and to be honest, I hadn’t considered it at all. But once Pam put that bug in my ear, I started exploring what the board did, following more board actions and documents and decided this was something I wanted to work toward. I had been on many YALSA committees and chaired my fair share as well. I was ready to take on the next challenge and I really wanted to give back to an organization that had given me so many opportunities for development and growth.

Read More →

What is the YALSA Board? What do they do? Who is on the YALSA Board? These could be questions you may have and if they are you’ve come to the right place. Each month, two YALSA Board of Directors are interviewed and their responses are shared here in order to help members get to know more about the Board members, the Board itself and things the Board is working on.

YALSA’s board of directors has the principal responsibility for fulfillment of YALSA’s mission and the legal accountability for its operations. The board has specific fiduciary duties of care, loyalty, and obedience to the law. As a group they are in charge of:
– establishing a clear organizational mission
– forming the strategic plan to accomplish the mission
– overseeing and evaluating the plan’s success
– hiring a competent executive director
– providing adequate supervision and support to the executive director

This month meet Mega Subramaniam, Associate Professor, College of Information Studies, University of Maryland.

What drew you to the Board? 

I debated a lot with myself before I decided to run as a YALSA board member. I wanted to make sure that I have enough knowledge, skills, and time to contribute to the wonderful things that the YALSA leadership was already doing. I was drawn to the Board because I wanted to inspire interdisciplinary experiences and interactions that transform the nature of services that youth librarians provide to youth. I was already impressed with the YALSA leadership and really felt connected with the changes in the organization plan (upcoming at that time), especially the leading the transformation of teen services priority area. I wanted to encourage research and professional development experiences that inspire youth services librarians to understand their role as change agents in youth development, by paying attention to the technical and societal changes that impact the everyday lives of youth. Being on the Board as a researcher and LIS educator helps me to channel what I have done in my research into practice. This opportunity is the ideal research-practice partnership that I have been aspiring to do for a long time. It is incredibly rewarding, and I enjoy it! Read More →

Happy LGBTQIA Pride Month!

YALSA’s Board has been hard at work since their last face-to-face meeting in Atlanta: continuing the work of the organizational plan, working on these projects, and planning for ALA Annual in Chicago!

Now, the Annual Conference is fast approaching, and I’m looking forward to the Printz Ceremony on Friday night, honoring Sarah Dessen at the Edwards Award Brunch on Saturday morning, talking with members at our Membership Meeting and President’s Program and so much more! You can find the details about these events and many more YALSA activities on the YALSA wiki.

In lieu of a happy hour this conference, YALSA is co-sponsoring The Other (Invisible) Refugees – Supporting Central American Children in Crisis on Saturday, June 24, from 4:30-6:30 pm in McCormick Place, W178a.  Join us for viewing a film from IBBY & REFORMA, and learn about the Children in Crisis Project, which seeks to raise awareness about these vulnerable youth and to provide resources to them. Donations are accepted at the door.

The Board agenda is up online, and more documents will be posted soon. Members can check them out in advance and send comments or feedback to me at gsarahthelibrarian @gmail.com. If you’ll be in Chicago for the conference, the first ten minutes of each of our board meetings are open to public comment. If you have a question for a particular board member about a document they’ve written, you can reach out to them here.

Be on the lookout for more blog posts in the two weeks from fellow Board members about the topics up for discussion and action.

You can stay up to date with all the conversations by following Executive Director Beth Yoke (@yalsa_director), myself (@glibrarian), and/or other YALSA board members for live tweets of adopted actions and discussion highlights. In addition, there will be follow-up blog posts explaining decisions and board actions once the conference is done.

Thanks for all that you do to make YALSA an awesome association, safe travels and hope to see you in Chicago!

What is the YALSA Board? What do they do? Who is on the YALSA Board? These could be questions you may have and if they are you’ve come to the right place. Each month, two YALSA Board of Directors are interviewed and their responses are shared here in order to help members get to know more about the Board members, the Board itself and things the Board is working on.

YALSA’s board of directors has the principal responsibility for fulfillment of YALSA’s mission and the legal accountability for its operations. The board has specific fiduciary duties of care, loyalty, and obedience to the law. As a group they are in charge of:
establishing a clear organizational mission
forming the strategic plan to accomplish the mission
overseeing and evaluating the plan’s success
hiring a competent executive director
providing adequate supervision and support to the executive director

This month meet Crystle Martin, Postdoctoral Researcher Digital Media and Learning Research Hub University of California, Irvine.

1. What drew you to the Board?

I started out my work with YALSA managing the YALSAblog. This gave me a great perspective on the needs and interests of members and what YALSA does as an association, which inspired me to contribute to YALSA more. When the Governance Nominating Committee approached me about running for the Board I was very enthusiastic.

2. what do you do on the board?

I am the Secretary of the YALSA Board and the Chair of the Leading the Transformation of Teen Services Standing Board Committee. The Secretary is a member of the Executive Committee and is responsible for ensuring that accurate documentation exists of both Board meetings and Executive Committee meetings. The Leading the Transformation of Teen Services Standing Board Committee is responsible for advancing the priority area of the same name in the Organization Plan. This year I was elected President-Elect for YALSA.

3. What the board is doing for its members

The board is always looking to make YALSA better for its members. We want to create opportunities for professional learning, access to content, and volunteering that are focused on the needs library staff have to serve youth today and in the future. To see what the Board and YALSA as a whole has been up to, check out the current projects page. One of the changes that the Board has undertaken recently that I have been very excited about is the transition of the Selection Lists to The Hub, which is making nominations for selected lists available to members as they are selected instead of all together at the end of the year. So keep an eye on the Awards and Selection List Category on The Hub to see Amazing Audiobooks, Quick Picks, and Popular Paperbacks nominees as they are posted, and look for a compiled list at the end of the year. 

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What is the YALSA Board? What do they do? Who is on the YALSA Board? These could be questions you may have and if they are you’ve come to the right place. Each month, two YALSA Board of Directors are interviewed and their responses are shared here in order to help members get to know more about the Board members, the Board itself and things the Board is working on.

YALSA’s board of directors has the principal responsibility for fulfillment of YALSA’s mission and the legal accountability for its operations. The board has specific fiduciary duties of care, loyalty, and obedience to the law. As a group they are in charge of:
establishing a clear organizational mission
forming the strategic plan to accomplish the mission
overseeing and evaluating the plan’s success
hiring a competent executive director
providing adequate supervision and support to the executive director

This month meet Gretchen Kolderup, Youth Librarian at the St. Helens Public Library in Oregon


What drew you to the Board?

I’d really enjoyed the committee work that I’d done with YALSA and at some point I started sitting in on board meetings and conference calls and thought the work the board was doing was really engaging and something I could contribute to. I’d gotten a lot out of my time with YALSA up to that point, and it seemed like a good opportunity to lend my time and talents to the organization. I also appreciated that board service gave me the chance to work with awesome people, to develop skills I didn’t already have, and to broaden my perspective on libraries to a national level.

What do you do on the board?

Like all board members, I liaise with chairs of member committees and task forces and contribute to our monthly board chats and our meetings at conferences. Board members are responsible for monitoring the financial health of the organization and attending to governance issues.

In my three years on the board, I’ve been on three different standing committees: Continuing Education, Research and Best Practices, and Advocacy. As part of those groups, I’ve helped bring documents to the board for consideration during meetings.

My term on the board also happened during a time when we’ve been very focused on strategic planning, and I think my experience in suburban, urban, and rural libraries has been helpful there. Board work is much more nebulous than committee work; it sort of reminds me of being a supervisor vs a front-line staff member.

What is the board doing for members?

Over the last year, the board (and YALSA’s Executive Director and staff) have been working on better aligning what the organization does to its organizational plan. There isn’t infinite staff time or infinite money, so we want what we’re doing to be as useful to members as possible!

For example, there’s been a renewed focus on supporting members as they create and run interest groups so that people who are working on similar projects or who have similar focus areas can come together and exchange information and ideas (for example, there are teen mental health and DC- and LA-area interest groups).

The board also directed the president to create a task force that’s been reviewing member grants and how members are recognized for excellent work; we’ll discuss their recommendations at Annual and that’ll lead to better grant and recognition opportunities for members.

We’ve also been looking at how to measure how effective different member groups are and what members get out of being on committees and task forces so we can make that experience even better.

All of this — and more! — will be on the agenda for Annual, so stop by a meeting if you can!

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What is the YALSA Board? What do they do? Who is on the YALSA Board? These could be questions you may have and if they are you’ve come to the right place. Each month, two YALSA Board of Directors are interviewed and their responses are shared here in order to help members get to know more about the Board members, the Board itself and things the Board is working on.

YALSA’s board of directors has the principal responsibility for fulfillment of YALSA’s mission and the legal accountability for its operations. The board has specific fiduciary duties of care, loyalty, and obedience to the law. As a group they are in charge of:

  • establishing a clear organizational mission
  • forming the strategic plan to accomplish the mission
  • overseeing and evaluating the plan’s success
  • hiring a competent executive director
  • providing adequate supervision and support to the executive director

This month meet Jane Gov, Teen Librarian at the Pasadena Public Library and YALSA Board Member Financial Advancement Committee Chair.

1. What drew you to the Board?

To be honest, I hadn’t considered board work until I was appointed in November 2015.  At the time, the Board seemed like something out of my reach and I wasn’t sure if I was qualified to serve. Now that I’m here, I feel fortunate to have this opportunity.  Being on the board is fascinating, and it’s made me more involved in civic engagement in my own community.  Like many YALSA members, I volunteer because I want to make positive change; being on the YALSA Board is getting to the heart of where these changes can start… and we can make improvements nationally.
2. What do you do on the board?

I am the Financial Advancement Committee (FAC) chair, which is an ex-officio member of the YALSA board. The charge of the committee is to provide oversight and continued enhancement of the Friends of YALSA program, including promotion, fundraising and donor recognition. We work with the Board to create and implement virtual fundraising campaigns and fundraising efforts at conferences. Each year, FAC is tasked with raising enough funds (over $14,000) to support member grants, scholarships and awards that do not have a sponsor or otherwise dedicated funding source. The fundraising campaigns are aimed at both members and nonmembers. We are also tasked with reviewing YALSA’s Fundraising Toolkit and make updates, which we’ve just completed.  In short, FAC basically helps raise money and thank our donors.

As a board member, I was on the standing committee for the priority Leading the Transformation of Teen Library Services, which includes strategies for leadership development, member engagement, and cultural competency.  However, since Midwinter, I’ve switched to the standing committee for Funder and Partner Development, which make perfect sense as it relates to my role as FAC chair.

I am also the board liaison for the Writing Award Jury, an award that’s funded by Friends of YALSA. The jury just finished their term last month.
3. What the board is doing for its members?

The YALSA board is taking a careful look at what we’re doing currently and whether some processes could improve. We’re evaluating the impact of what we do as an organization. YALSA board is looking to increase member engagement by giving members more feasible opportunities to get involved (such as short term and virtual opportunities), and provide resources that are more relevant, more effective, more engaging, but at a quicker pace—yet still with the same (or better) quality. Some examples include the proposed improvements with the mentorship program, the movement of some selection lists to the Hub, and the new Teen Book Finder Database.
4. Do you have a teen book you may be reading or a recent program you may have done with and for teens.

My teens just wrapped up our next issue of the Teen Zine, a bi-annual publication that features writing, photos, book lists, and articles by or about teens at the library. I’m proud of this issue because there were more teens involved in its making—double the number since the pilot issue. There are about a dozen editors and graphic designers, and another dozen writing contributors, half of whom got an opportunity to interview authors during our book festival. This issue includes teen articles about some of our more notable programs such as our annual murder mystery (written and delivered by the Teen Advisory Board), a large art show featuring artwork by teens with autism, photos of our National Coming Out Day celebration (which was the first for our city and took place at the library), and articles about our annual teen book festival. Not only does the zine show in photos all the great work our teens have done in the last six months, but working on the zine itself gave them a chance to showcase their graphic design and editing skills—more so than the previous years. And it’s nearly twice the length of the last issue.

I just finished a book I was reviewing for a journal, and it’s amazing! Traitor to the Throne, sequel to Rebel of the Sands by Alwyn Hamilton.  It’s got the action of a western, mixed with Arabian mythology, and threaded with magic and political intrigue. Fans of Leigh Bardugo or Rae Carson would love this one.

The YALSA board is always looking to grow and improve. We use monthly board chats as a way to deepen our skills in governance and discuss trends and best practices impacting non-profit boards around the country and how we can bring those ideas to make YALSA the best association it can be.

In January, we met to discuss the article “Governance as Leadership: Reframing the Work of the Nonprofit Board” with past board member Maureen Hartman. Maureen is the Manager of Strategic Services for the Hennepin County Library. She and her team lead the library in strategic planning, learning and development, diversity and inclusion, and change management. I can think of no person more qualified to lead a discussion about the three modes of board work.

Governance boards spend most of their time in one of three modes:

  • Fiduciary: When the board is being a good steward of association resources. In this mode you might see or hear the board discussion financial reports or going through expected costs for an upcoming event. For YALSA, this role is carried by the whole board, but the Executive Committee takes on special responsibilities to care for our assets.
  • Strategic: My home library board is often in Strategic mode! Here the board is setting priorities, reviewing the strategic plan and monitoring progress. You have probably seen this mode from YALSA in the past, but recently we have been spending a lot of time in the third mode…
  • Generative: With the formation of the new organizational plan, the YALSA Board has spent a lot of time in this third mode. The Generative mode is when the board is deciding “what to pay attention to, what it means, and what to do about it.”

I don’t think these modes are exclusive to boards, I know I recognize these modes in conversations and meetings we have at my library. I bet you see them in your workplace too. As a board, we work to balance these three modes, which can be a challenges. Sometimes in the board cycle, like the recently organizational planning process we went through, will call for more time in the generative mode. Now the board, has to switch back to more time in the strategic and fiduciary modes as we work to operationalize the plan and move forward toward our goals.

To end the discussion, we all identified a goal or action item that we can work on at or leading up to the Midwinter meeting. Two goals clearly rose to the top as priorities for the board: communicating with members both in person, and virtually about the new organizational plan of YALSA and all the work we are doing, and helping the Executive Director and Staff balance their work to help achieve the goals of the new plan.

If you are wondering what the board is up to at Midwinter,  you can see the schedule of board meetings and agenda. If you are attending ALA Midwinter and you see a board member (look for our YALSA Board Member ribbons) please come up and say hello! We would love to hear from you!

Kate McNair is a YALSA Board Member. Come see her at the YALSA booth #709 on Saturday, January 21 9-10:30am.