Greetings, all! For those of you who traveled to Annual, I’m hoping you’ve recovered from the high temperatures, the hot winds, the pervasive smoke, and the ding-ding-ding of casino machines. If you didn’t travel to Las Vegas, just remember the YA Symposium is coming up in November, and Austin is not a desert, presents more opportunities to mingle with colleagues passionate about youth services, and doesn’t require as much walking around in a convention center. Plus, migas!
I wanted to call your attention to a couple of significant policies that will impact your work as committee members and leaders. At Annual 2014, the Board confirmed an update to the YALSA Social Media Policy, and adopted an Ethical Behavior Policy which sets expectations for YALSA committee members and leaders, as well as providing information about what those leaders and members can expect from YALSA. Both documents recognize the increasing impact social media has on both professional identity and networking, and helps set standards which ensure the integrity and enjoyment of all the work both members and YALSA perform. Read More →
The YALSA Board met three times at ALA Annual in Anaheim. Over those three meetings, the Board had some substantial discussions, set up some new task forces and ad hoc Board committees, approved two new committee manuals, and moved forward on several other items. For more details on these items, see the official Board documents at http://www.ala.org/yalsa/workingwithyalsa/governance/board/annual2012. The official minutes will also be posted in the Governance section of the website in the near future. The summary is below:
New Task Forces
- A president-elect advisory task force to work with president-elect Shannon Peterson on defining her presidential theme and setting her goals.
- An appointments task force to work with president-elect Shannon Peterson to help her make committee appointments during the coming year.
- A 365 Days of YA task force to create and disseminate a calendar of easy to implement teen services resources aimed at new teens services librarians, library generalists, and paraprofessionals.
- A state library association outreach task force to reach out to YA sections and roundtables of state library associations and school library associations to strengthen ties with these like-minded organizations.
- A youth engagement task force to find ways to involve teens in the work of the YALSA Board by identifying and implementing projects in conjunction with Teen Advisory Groups.
- A capacity-building task force to focus on the capacity-building goal of YALSA’s strategic plan.
- A task force to create a manual for virtual selection committees.
- A YALSA/ALSC/AASL task force to look at issues around the Common Core Standards.
Although the YALSA Board of Directors does a lot of work online and on the telephone throughout the year, our face-to-face meetings at ALA Midwinter and ALA Annual are big occasions for us to have some weighty discussions and make some major decisions. The agenda and board documents for Annual are now available online at www.ala.org/yalsa/workingwithyalsa/governance/board/annual2012. All members are welcome to attend any Board meeting.
The YALSA Board meeting at Annual is actually three separate meetings:
- Saturday, from 2:30-5:30, in the Convention Center, Room 211A
- Sunday, from 4-5:30, in the Convention Center, Room 211B
- Monday, from 1:30-3:30, in the Convention Center, Room 212 B
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 →
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 →