I’m en route to Seattle even as I type this! What will the board and I be up to at the 2013 Midwinter conference? Keep reading to find out.
It’s going to be an awesome conference. We’ve got programs, meetings and activities everywhere. We’ll be talking about advocacy, collaborations, books and reading, the future of teen services in libraries and more.
First, I’ll be helping YALSA host the first National Forum on Teens & Libraries on January 23 and 24. This is the first summit of its kind, and we’ll be bringing leaders on youth development, libraries, technology, publishing, everything. The goal is figure out where teen services is going and where it needs to be in the 21st Century. ALA President Maureen Sullivan will be the lead moderator, and we’ve got some amazing special guest stars, including Lee Rainey, head of the Pew Internet and American Life Project, Mizuko Ito, Professor in Residence and MacArthur Foundation Chair in Digital Media and Learning at the University of California, Irvine, Renee Hobbs, Director of the Harrington School of Communications & Media at the University of Rhode Island and George Needham, Vice President for Global and Regional Councils at the Online Computer Library Center. We’ll be talking lots of teens, literacy, library, technology and more. I’ll even be leading the Youth Panel portion of the forum with special awesome teens from YALSA President-Elect Shannon Peterson. We’ll be tweeting, blogging and posting the entire time, so check out our social media channels to find out what’s going on.
The YALSA Executive Committee will also be meeting with the executive committees of our sister divisions, AASL and ALSC. The three divisions traditionally meet every Thursday before Midwinter and Annual conferences. This time we’ll be talking about our Joint School/Public Library committee, a new Common Core taskforce and a whole lot more.
The YALSA Board will also be pretty busy this conference. Not only will you see us at Leadership Development (coffee and carbs!!!) and the YALSA Happy Hour (free drinks and apps!!!) on Saturday, feel free to drop by our meetings from 1:30-5:30 on Saturday, 4:30-5:30 on Sunday and 1:30-3:30 on Monday, all in room 309 of the convention center. You’ll also see us at the Youth Media Awards and the Morris and Non-Fiction awards ceremony on Monday.
What will the Board be talking about? Lots of stuff. In thinking about how YALSA can help its members advocate for teen services in libraries, the Board will be having a major discussion on how to reach library administrators to help them understand the importance of teen services.
We also know that members want to learn more about teen programming in libraries. So we’ll be voting to establish a new taskforce of programming best practices and replicable program examples for members. Interested in serving on the taskforce? Hit me up after Midwinter!
We also know how much everyone loves our biennial YA Lit Symposium. In fact, we know ya’ll love it so much that we’re going to be considering whether or not we should do it every year as opposed to every other year. Got an opinion? Let us know what you think.
Also back by popular demand is the YALSA Road Trip. We know from the member survey and from my virtual town halls that members really want to find better ways to connect to one another on a regional or state-by-state basis. The board will be brainstorming new ways that YALSA can reboot this exciting project.
We’ll also be exploring lots of other new ways for members to connect with one another, both virtually and in-person. We’ll be talking about a new student chapter proposal as well as a cool new idea on how members who love teen books can better connect with one another.
Finally, we’ll be at the Coffee with the Candidates, which is a great opportunity for members to meet this year’s candidates for President-Elect as well as the Board. This is your chance to get up close and personal with the candidates and let them know your concerns and ideas. I know I’ll be there with plenty of questions of my own.
All in all, it’s gonna be a super busy conference, and I’m looking forward to seeing everyone there. I’ll be the guy with the crazy socks. Over and out. See you there.
By Grahame Thompson
Have we seen a potentially new form of global governance quietly emerging over the last decade or so, one that is establishing a surrogate and informal process of the constitutionalization of global economic and political relationships, something that is creeping up on us almost unnoticed? This issue of ‘global constitutionalization’ has become an important topic of analysis over recent years. Its development is most obvious in the case of business and corporate activity but I suggest it has a much wider provenance and is threatening to encompass many other aspects of global governance like human rights, security and warfare, environmental regulation, and more besides. One difficulty in analyzing this trend is to define its characteristics and parameters since it represents a rather loose configuration, one that is not easy to pin down.
Quasi-constitutionalization is a surrogate process of constitutionalization, not a coherent program with a rounded set of outcomes but full of contradictory half-finished currents and projects: an ‘assemblage’ of many disparate advances and often directionless moves – almost an accidental coming together of elements. So it does not amount to a ‘system’ in any conventional sense. This means it marshals together a complex bricolage of resources: material techniques and devices like models, documents, court decisions, legal statutes and treaties; institutional orders like legal apparatuses, bodies and governance organizations; and discursive expertise, theoretical knowledges and instruments. But it is a process nonetheless: it is building norms of conduct, rule-making, and a distribution of powers in a ‘global polity’.
I call this a quasi-constitutional process because while it resembles a constitution in many respects it is difficult to transpose constitutionality directly into an international environment where there is no single competent authority that might foster or enforce such a constitution.
In turn, this connects to various senses of the juridicalization of international corporate and other affairs, where new or revitalized types of law are increasingly being brought into play as the mechanisms for resolving disputes or organizing governance. This involves new forms of public law, private law, customary law, regulatory and administrative law, all of which are rapidly evolving in the international arena alongside traditional international law. Institutions that embody such a process are the WTO, various agencies of the UN, the OECD, Bilateral Trade and Investment treaties, and a huge number of standard setting and benchmarking organization many of which are private in character but which both claim and exercise a public power at the global level. This is the site of a reinvigorated private law and private authority operating in the international domain. In the case of companies, they are increasingly adopting the language of global corporate citizenship to characterize their activity as civic actors in this evolving quasi-constitutional environment, and they are being addressed as such by bodies like the World Economic Forum and the UN’s Global Compact. Bilateral trade and investment treaties have mushroomed over recent years. Investment treaties are an example of global private administrative law in action.
On the other hand we have the OECD in its capacity as sponsor of socially responsible conduct by multinational companies (Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises) which has become an instrument of global public administrative law. John Ruggie’s recent attempt to introduce a comprehensive regime of human rights into the business world (the UNs Protect, Respect and Remedy Framework) is another case in point of the creeping quasi-constitutionalizing process.
But a major issue of concern is whether quasi-constitutionalization leads to the Rule by Laws (RbLs) rather than the Rule of Law (RoL) in the international system? The RoL may be being given away as RbLs replace a comprehensive system of democratically constituted judicial review, which cannot happen in the case of global quasi-constitutionality.
Thus in this evolving environment, instead of the rule by elected and accountable political officials we are seeing the emergence of rule by lawyers and by aged judges and law professors in international commercial and other matters. These are the actors that are leading the process of institutional rule-making. Public and particularly private elites are making-up the rules as they go along, arbitrarily and on an ad hoc basis. I call this a rule by a new self-appointed Guild of Lawyers on the one hand and a new Clerisy of the Law on the other. In effect, we are giving up any form of democratic legitimacy and accountability with this introduction of global quasi-constitutionalization.
Grahame F. Thompson is Professor of Political Economy at the Copenhagen Business School (Denmark), and Emeritus Professor at the Open University (England). His research and teaching interests have been in international political economy matters, and globalization; with a recent focus on the role of business organization in the context of international economic matters. He is the author of The Constitutionalization of the Global Corporate Sphere? (OUP, 2012).
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Image credit: Cover of U.S. Constitution by giftlegacy via iStockphoto.
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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
The Board allots 10 minutes at the beginning of each session for visitors or Board members to share information. This is just to keep us all up to date on any information that affects YALSA or our members. In addition, there is always time allotted to hear from our ALA Executive Board rep (Steve Matthews) and our ALA BARC (Budget Analysis and Review Committee) rep (Alex Villagran). In addition, we will receive a report from our Emerging Leaders group. Other than that, we take agenda items in roughly the order they appear on the agenda, but we may move things around in order to finish a topic before the end of a session, or accommodate a member who is making a report to the Board.
The first session usually begins with the adoption of the “consent agenda.” These are items such as reports that do not require discussion or action, or items that the board has already discussed and voted on in ALA Connect. Any item may be pulled from the consent agenda for full discussion and separate vote if a Board member requests it.
The rest of the agenda is divided into action items (which require action), discussion items (which may generate action, but don’t have to), and information items. This meeting’s action items include:
- Approving an Odyssey Award Committee manual
- Establishing a “365 Days of YA” task force to crowdsource a list of 365 tried and true, easy to implement teen services activities and create an online calendar to promote them.
- Establishing a State Association outreach task force, to strengthen ties with like-minded organizations, such as YA sections of state library associations.
- Piloting a virtual selection committee so that members who cannot come to conferences will have an opportunity to serve on a selection or award committee.
- Forming a Youth Engagement Committee that would identify and implement projects in conjunction with teen advisory groups, as a way to get teen involvement in YALSA governance.
- Approving sponsor and partner guidelines
Discussion items include:
- Looking at the latest draft of a new manual for the Nonfiction Award Committee
- Discussing strategies for boosting YALSA’s revenue streams
- Discussing the Board member self-assessment process—what were the results, and what should change in the future
- Discussing how to go forward in evaluating the success of the Strategic Plan
- Looking at a report on the evaluation of the interest groups and discussion groups and deciding where to go from here
- Discussing a report from the Division and Membership Promotion committee about how best to achieve local presence for YALSA
The Monday afternoon meeting will include finishing up any discussion or action items that weren’t completed on Saturday or Sunday, adopting and presenting resolutions in honor of retiring board members, and installing new board members.
The YALSA Board has a lot of items to cover in a relatively short amount of time, so if you do attend a meeting, it may seem like things are moving at a rapid pace. Fortunately, the Board members take their responsibilities seriously, and h
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.
New Ad-hoc Board committees
- The previously-approved e-content task force will now be an ad hoc committee of the Board.
- An ad hoc committee of the Board will look at the recommendations on the future of Interest and Discussion Groups from both the previous task force and from the Board members and prioritize the recommendations.
Committee Manuals
- The Board approved a new manual for the Odyssey Committee. ALSC also approved the manual at this conference.
- The Board approved a new manual for the Excellence in Nonfiction Award Committee. This includes some changes in policies and procedures, including the way the vetted nomination list is created.
Other major motions and discussions
- The Board approved guidelines for strategic partnerships with other organizations.
- The Board approved a two-year pilot project for virtual selection and award committees. The Popular Paperbacks for Young Adults Committee and Edwards Award Committee that begin their work in February 2013 will be virtual committees, which means that members will not be required to attend conferences to be on the committees. The Board will establish a task force to evaluate the process at the end of the first year to decide whether it should continue and if the appropriate committees were chosen.
- The Board discussed member engagement, what it means to different members, and what YALSA wants “engagement” to look like.
- The YALSA Board voted to endorse the School Library resolution in ALA Council, and the YALSA Councilor later reported that the resolution had been approved.
- The Board had a discussion and exercise on YALSA’s major revenue streams (events, dues, and sales of products) and what could be done to build those sources of income.
- The Board discussed the past year’s Board member self-assessment process and agreed to continue with it for the coming year.
- The Board discussed how best to evaluate the success of the Strategic Plan, and directed the Strategic Planning Committee to develop an evaluation pl
Ever wonder what’s going on with the Division? A ton of great information can be found under the “Working with YALSA” portion of the website. The minutes from the YALSA Board and the YALSA Executive Committee meetings (as well as supporting documents) can be found there in the Governance section.
Check out the most recent draft Board minutes here
and draft Exec Committee minutes here.
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By Mark Bevir
Governance, governance everywhere – why has the word “governance” become so common? One reason is that many people believe that the state no longer matters, or at least the state matters far less than it used to. Even politicians often tell us that the state can’t do much. They say they have no choice about many policies. The global economy compels them to introduce austerity programs. The need for competitiveness requires them to contract-out public services, including some prisons in the US.
If the state isn’t ruling through government institutions, then presumably there is a more diffuse form of governance involving various actors. So, “governance” is a broader term than “state” or “government”. Governance refers to all processes of governing, whether undertaken by a government, market, or network, whether over a family, corporation, or territory, and whether by laws, norms, power, or language. Governance focuses not only on the state and its institutions but also on the creation of rule and order in social practices.
Martin Schulz, President of the European Parliament
The rise of the word “governance” as an alternative to “government” reflects some of the most important social and political trends of recent times. Social scientists sometimes talk of the hollowing-out of the state. The state has been weakened from above by the rise of regional blocs like the European Union and by the global economy. The state has been weakened from below by the use of contracts and partnerships that involve other organizations in the delivery of public services. Globalization and the transformation of the public sector mean that the state cannot dictate or coordinate public policy. The state depends in part on global, transnational, private, and voluntary sector organizations to implement many of its policies. Further, the state is rarely able to control or command these other actors. The state has to negotiate with them as best it can, and often it has little bargaining power.
But, although the role of the state has changed, these changes do not necessarily mean that the state is less important. An alternative perspective might suggest that the state has simply changed the way it acts. From this viewpoint, the state has adopted more indirect tools of governing but these are just as effective – perhaps even more so – than the ones they replaced. Whereas the state used to govern directly through bureaucratic agencies, today it governs indirectly through, for example, contracts, regulations, and targets. Perhaps, therefore, the state has not been hollowed-out so much as come to focus on meta-governance, that is, the governance of the other organizations in the markets and networks that now seem to govern us.
The hollow state and meta-governance appear to be competing descriptions of today’s politics. If we say the state has been hollowed out, we seem to imply it no longer matters. If we say the state is the key to meta-governance, we seem to imply it retains the central role in deciding public policy. Perhaps, however, the two descriptions are compatible with one another. The real lesson of the rise of the word “governance” might be that there is something wrong with our very concept of the state.
All too often people evoke the state as if it were some kind of monolithic entity. They say that “the state did something” or that “state power lay behind something”. However, the state is not a person capable of acting; rather, the state consists of various people who do not always not act in a manner consistent with one another. “The state” contains a vast range of different people in various agencies, with various relationships acting in various ways for various purposes and in accord with various beliefs. Far from being a monolithic entity that acts with one mind, the state contains within it all kinds of contests and misunderstandings.
Descriptions of a hollow state tell us that policymakers have actively tried to replace bureaucracies with markets and networks. They evoke complex policy environments in which central government departments are not necessarily the most important actors let alone the only ones. Descriptions of meta-governance tell us that policymakers introduced markets and networks as tools by which they hoped to get certain ends. They evoke the ways central government departments act in complex policy environments.
When we see the word “governance”, it should remind us that the state is an abstraction based on diverse and contested patterns of concrete activity. State action and state power do not fit one neat pattern – neither that of hollowing-out or meta-governance. Presidents, prime ministers, legislators, civil servants, and street level bureaucrats can all sometimes make a difference, but the state is stateless, for it has no essence.
Mark Bevir is a Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley. He is the author of several books including Governance: A Very Short Introduction (2012) and The State as Cultural Practice (2010). He is also the editor or co-editor of 10 books, including a two volume Encyclopaedia of Governance (2007). He founded the undergraduate course on ‘Theories of Governance’ at Berkeley and teaches a graduate course on ‘Strategies of Contemporary Governance’.
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Image Credit: Martin Schulz during the election camapign in 2009. Creative Commons Licence – Mettmann. (via Wikimedia Commons)
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“What do you say to a Librarian that might not feel empowered to advocate for library services to their legislators or local community?” Rhonda Puntney Gould, ALSC Division Councilor who led the Youth Council Caucus meeting asked this difficult question this morning.
We’ll get to a few of the suggestions at the end of this post.
Youth Council Caucus is made up of ALA Councilors who are also members of one of ALA’s youth divisions; AASL, ALSC, and YALSA. To be a member of the YCC, you need to be on ALA Council and a Youth Division member. To attend a meeting, being an ALA member is all that is needed. Because issues involving youth often overlap divisions, it makes sense that there is a forum to come together for these discussions.
Topics addressed during the meeting included:
Youth Division Updates
YALSA: Nick Buron, YALSA ALA Councilor shared that the division is exploring more ways to connect with members not able to attend conference in person while keeping in mind to still be supportive of the association of ALA. He also made note of the November 2012 Young Adult Literature Symposium in St. Louis.
ALSC: Rhonda noted that the 2012 ALSC National Institute will be held in September in Indianapolis.
AASL: Sara Kelly Johns, AASL ALA Councilor shared that the 2012 Fall Forum will be held in October in Greenville, SC with Henry Jenkins as the keynote.
There was also some discussion around the Whitehouse.gov School Library petition and some of the difficulties people have had in setting up an account to be able to vote. ALA has released a press release regarding the petition. A wiki has been set up for resources on petitioning the government including a lesson plan to be used with students.
Sara also noted that the SKILLS Act has been introduced in both the House and Senate.
Sara advised to keep the accreditation issue with AASL/ALA and NCATE on our radars as it’s likely to come up again during ALA Annual in June.
Lastly, in regards to updates on AASL, an attendee reminded us that ALA President Molly Raphael has developed a 2011-2012 Special Presidential Task Force on School Libraries.
Note: During ALA Council after the YCC meeting, Council passed a resolution to add a non-voting representative from the AASL Educators of School Librarians Section to the Committee on Education.
State Youth-related News Shared by Attendees:
New York:A newly created Senate Select Committee on Libraries was formed.
Tennessee:
My colleague, YALSA member, ALA Emerging Leader, and first time conference attendee agreed for me to post her observations of Midwinter. I’ve no doubt we’ll be hearing from her more often! A warm welcome to Catherine Haydon!
I’ll admit that I’m a bit jet-lagged, over-caffeinated, and used every ounce of remaining energy I had to be enthusiastic and on-point for an outreach visit to a local middle school once I returned from Dallas– but today’s slugglishness was definitely worth the amazing experience attending my first ALA Midwinter Conference. I’m participating in the 2012 ALA Emerging Leaders Program and had the opportunity to learn more about the organizational structure of both ALA and YALSA, as well as observe ALA and YALSA leaders in action throughout the conference. I sat in on a YALSA Board of Directors meeting and was pretty impressed with our leaders. Connecting with and providing support for librarians, whether in school or public libraries, in order to ultimately engage and empower teens was kept at the core of every topic they discussed; I observed a particularly engaging discussion on ways YALSA can partner with state library associations in order to have the greatest impact on teen-serving library staff.
While in Dallas, I also braved a chilly morning walk and attended “YALSA 201,” a short session that provided information on how members can get more involved in YALSA. I’ve been a YALSA member for five years and have relied on programming, technology and advocacy resources developed by various YALSA Committees and Taskforces to get me through my day-to-day work with teens. I’m sure it was the buzz and excitement that came with finally being at an ALA Conference, plus all the friendly encounters I had with YALSA folks, but I got the final push I needed and feel that it’s now my time to contribute to YALSA. I’m excited to work on YALSA’s project through the ALA Emerging Leaders Program and hope to serve on a committee or two in the next few years.
Now that I’m back at home, several colleagues have asked me about my favorite experience at Midwinter. I’ve shrugged some folks off or just replied that I enjoyed the entire experience, but when I thought a bit harder there’s one moment that really stood out. It was Monday morning during the ALA Youth Media Awards, and specifically when they were announcing the Morris Award finalists and winner. A group of librarians several rows in front of me jumped up and screamed loudly when YALSA President Sarah Flowers announced Where Things Come Back by John Corey Whaley
as the winner; while my attention was initially focused on the group of excited librarians ahead, I was distracted by the librarian sitting directly in front of me who leaned over to her neighbor and whispered, “That’s it! That’s the book I was telling you I wanted to recommend to Drew. He comes by the library every afternoon and I know he’d love it.” Miles away from home and sitting in a theater with hundreds of fellow librarians so focused on the books, this librarian remained focused on the teens she served. As the next award was announced, I smiled and silently thanked the librarian for reminding me why I was there – to connect teens with books. I spent the remainder of the awards presentation thinking about these new award-winning titles and the ways in which they would engage, inspire and challenge the teens at my library.
Was this your first time attending an ALA Conference? If so, I’d love to h
The YALSA Board of Directors had a jam-packed agenda at Midwinter. Minutes will be available soon, but meanwhile, here are some of the major decisions that we made.
Note that the Board voted to establish several new task forces. If you are interested in being on any of these task forces, please submit a volunteer form right away.
- Voted to name a new scholarship the Dorothy Broderick Conference Scholarship for Students, and directed the President to appoint a jury to vet the applications. The scholarship will be awarded for the first time this spring, for attendance at ALA Annual Conference 2012.
- Confirmed Carrie Kausch as the first YALSA Board Fellow.
- Approved funds for a marketing consultant to evaluate YALSA’s current marketing strategy and develop new marketing strategies.
- Approved the use of the interest from the Morris Endowment for FY12-FY14 to promote YALSA’s book and media lists and awards.
- Directed the President to establish a task force to explore the feasibility of increasing the frequency of the YA Lit Symposium to a yearly event, beginning in 2014.
- Directed the President to establish a task force to create advocacy benchmarks.
- Approved using Friends of YALSA funds in 2012 to support the “YALSA Box” resource to provide and promote materials free to members to host a YALSA-related event in their community.
- Directed the President to establish a task force to monitor trends in e-content, including apps and enhanced e-books. Some of the task force’s tasks might include creating tip sheets related to teens and e-content; keeping members up to date on e-content news via the blog; and suggesting topics for webinars and e-courses.
- Established an ad-hoc Board subcommittee to explore the feasibility of converting one or more award or selection committee to an all-virtual committee.
- Directed the President to establish a task force to develop a manual for the Excellence in Nonfiction Award committee.
- Established an ad-hoc Board subcommittee to create a menu of options to explore how YALSA could easily involve teens in the work of YALSA.
- Directed the President to establish a task force of members from the school library community to make recommendations to the Board for engaging school library members and raising awareness of YALSA’s resources and services among school librarians.
Sarah Flowers
YALSA President
Monthly President’s Report – February 2012
March kind of sneaked up on me, I guess because February is a short month. Below is a summary of activities that I have completed or am working on. Happy Teen Tech Week!
Completed Tasks
- Committee Chairs: I had phone conversations with several YALSA committee chairs about the work of their committees.
- Board Activities:
- The Board had an online chat on February 1. Board members offered suggestions for the content of the selection and award committee chair and member webinars.
- The Board met by telephone on February 29 to discuss chair quarterly reports and to take action on two requests for Board action that came from committees.
- The Board voted to accept a proposal from the Morris Award committee to amend the eligibility rules to exclude self-published and e-book only books from consideration. The new rule will be re-evaluated after the 2013 award.
- The Board voted to change the publication schedule of the Journal of Research on Libraries and Young Adults (JRLYA) from quarterly to a rolling schedule, pending receipt of a new ISSN.
- Committee/Jury/Taskforce Appointments:
- I appointed members to fill vacancies on several committees.
- I continued appointing members to fill new task forces created by Board action at Midwinter
- I presented a webinar for new selection and award committee chairs on February 1.
- Committees:
- I presented a webinar for new selection and award committee members on February 8.
Partnerships. I am participating in an ALA-wide School Library task force. Members include AASL, ALSC, and PLA members, as well as people from the ALA Washington Office and others. I participated in a conference call on February 27. The task force is working on ways to bring the plight of school libraries to the attention of legislators and other decision-makers.
Writing:
- Submitted the president’s column for the Spring issue of YALS.
- Wrote a post on the YALSA blog to explain changes in YALSA’s website.
- Wrote a post on the YALSA blog to encourage members to have their libraries fill out the young adult services portion of the PLDS survey.
Media & Outreach
- Along with YALSA Membership Coordinator Letitia Smith, staffed the YALSA booth at the Beyond School Hours conference in Burlingame, CA, February 16-17.
- Spoke with Jennifer Fink, a freelance writer doing a piece for Scholastic Instructor, about ways teachers and parents can use new media to encourage reading and writing.
- Spoke with Rocco Staino, from School Library Journal about YALSA’s Booze for Books initiative.
- With help from YALSA’s Web Services Manager, Stevie Kuenn, submitted a letter to Chris Dodd, Chairman of the MPAA, to encourage a PG-13 rating for the upcoming film version of Stephen Chbosky’s The Perks of Being a Wallflower.
Important YALSA News & Reminders
- Don’t forget to vote! ALA (and YALSA) elections are from March 19-April 27. You will be receiving an email from ALA with a lin
Monthly President’s Report – March 2012
Below is a summary of activities that I have completed or am working on.
Completed Tasks
- Committee Chairs: I had phone conversations with several YALSA committee chairs about the work of their committees.
- Committee/Jury/Taskforce Appointments: I appointed members to fill vacancies on several committees and continued appointing members to fill new task forces created by Board action at Midwinter.
Partnerships.
- YALSA is working with the American Camp Association and ALSC to create nature-focused lists of recommended reading for tweens and teens.
- YALSA teamed up with the Miami Dade Public Library to co-host the Wrestle Mania Reading Challenge Championships on March 31.
- YALSA received $75,000 from the Digital Media Learning Competition to implement a new effort to create badges for continuing education, so we’ll be working closely with HASTAC, Mozilla, MacArthur and Badgeville. You’ll be hearing much more about this in the months to come!
Media & Outreach.
- I attended a meeting of BAYA (Bay Area Young Adult librarians) on March 27, to discuss YALSA and writing for the profession. It was great to hear them talk about their creative Hunger Games programs, too!
- I spoke with Cristina Merrill of the International Business Times about YA books.
- I attended the Public Library Association conference, where Mary Hastler and I presented a program on YALSA’s competencies and Evaluation Tool. I also spent some time helping to staff the ALA booth, along with other YALSA members and members and staff of other ALA divisions. It was a great opportunity to visit with members and get feedback about YALSA’s services.
- Also at PLA, I had a great time at the YALSA Happy Hour, where I had a chance to meet and chat with YALSA members.
- I contributed statements for YALSA news releases about Teen Tech Week, Support Teen Literature Day, and Summer Reading Program Grants.
Important YALSA News & Reminders
- Don’t forget to vote! ALA (and YALSA) elections are from March 19-April 27. You will be receiving an email from ALA with a link to the online ballot. Information on all the candidates appeared in the blog during February.
Monthly President’s Report – April 2012
April was a very interesting month for me on the YALSA front. I’m just back from a week in Washington, D.C. On Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday of last week, YALSA Executive Director Beth Yoke and I, along with several hundred other library supporters, attended National Library Legislative Day. Beth and I had eight separate meetings over two days, with legislators’ staff members, and with representatives from other organizations that have similar interests to YALSA, such as the Afterschool Alliance, the Center for Excellent Education, and the International Reading Association. We talked about how we could support one another’s missions.
Then on Friday and Saturday of the same week, I staffed the YALSA booth at the USA Science and Engineering Festival at the Washington Convention Center. Along with DC-area YALSA members, I handed out bookmarks and flyers, showed the demo of the YALSA Teen Book Finder App (available in May—we hope—from Apple’s App Store), chatted with teens, parents, teachers, and librarians, and did some on-the-fly readers’ advisory. We encouraged teens to participate in this year’s Teens’ Top Ten, and there was a lot of interest and enthusiasm.
Below is a summary of activities that I have completed or am working on.
Committees
- Committee Chairs:
- I had phone conversations with several YALSA committee chairs about the work of their committees.
- Committee/Jury/Taskforce Appointments:
- I appointed members to fill vacancies on several committees.
- I continued appointing members to fill new task forces created by Board action at Midwinter
Board Activities
- I participated, with other Board members, in an online chat about recruiting and engaging members.
- I worked with Board members on their self-assessments.
- I worked with Executive Committee members to create an agenda for the Spring Executive Conference Call, to be held on Thursday, May 3.
- Board members, for National Volunteer Week, wrote thank-you notes to YALSA committee members.
Partnerships.
- Mary Fellows, ALSC President, and I, along with our Presidents’ Program co-chairs, have been making final arrangements for our combined Presidents’ Program at ALA Annual. I hope many of you will be able to join us bright and early Monday morning to hear Dr. Michelle Poris of SmartyPants and Stephen Abram of GaleCengage share their insights on the Digital Lives of Tweens and Young Teens.
- I continue to participate in the School Libraries Task Force with members of other ALA divisions.
Writing.
Media & Outreach.
- Spoke with Jeff Rivera, for Entertainment Weekly, about trends in YA literature.
- Spoke with Carlie Geisinger, of the Gilroy (CA) Dispatch about teen spaces and the value of having teen rooms in libraries. The occasion of the article was the opening of a new library building in a community that had never had a separate teen room.
- For National Volunteer Week,
Monthly President’s Report – May 2012
May is all about getting ready for ALA Annual. Also, I’m very excited that YALSA’s free Teen Book Finder iPhone/iPad app is now available in Apple’s App Store. (An Android version will be coming later this year.) If you have an iPhone or iPad, download it and check it out!
Below is a summary of activities that I have completed or am working on.
Committees
- Committee Chairs:
- I had phone conversations with several YALSA committee chairs about the work of their committees.
- Committee/Jury/Taskforce Appointments:
- I appointed members to fill vacancies on several committees.
- I continued appointing members to fill new task forces created by Board action at Midwinter
Board Activities
- I participated, with other Board members, in an online chat about YALSA’s relationship with “Big ALA.”
- I worked with Board members on their self-assessments.
- I worked with Executive Committee members to create an agenda for the ALA Annual and for the Board Meeting by Conference call on June 1.
Partnerships.
- Mary Fellows, ALSC President, and I, along with our Presidents’ Program co-chairs, Sarah Couri and Tessa Michaelson, had a conference call to make the final arrangements for our combined Presidents’ Program at ALA Annual. I hope many of you will be able to join us bright and early Monday morning to hear Dr. Michelle Poris of SmartyPants and Stephen Abram of GaleCengage share their insights on the Digital Lives of Tweens and Young Teens. If you can’t be there, follow us on Twitter by following the hashtag #tweentech.
- I continue to participate in the School Libraries Task Force with members of other ALA divisions.
- I am working with Carl Harvey, AASL President, and Mary Fellows, ALSC President, to plan for the joint AASL/ALSC/YALSA Executive Committee meeting to be held at ALA Annual.
Writing.
- I wrote a post for the YALSA Blog on access to YALSA’s selected lists and awards.
- I wrote my final President’s Column for YALS, which will appear in the Summer issue.
Media & Outreach.
- I spoke with Linda Jacobsen, a freelance writer who is working on a piece for the Greatschools.org about boys and reading.
- I contributed statements for YALSA press releases.
Important YALSA News & Reminders
- If you are going to Anaheim for ALA Annual, don’t forget to register for special events. If you did “bundled registration” last fall, you will need to go back in to your registration for to add special events, such as:
- Two great half-day preconferences: Books We’ll Still Talk about 45 Years from Now and Source Code: Digital Youth Participation.
- The Margaret Edwards Award luncheon, featuring author Susan Cooper.
- The YA Author Coffee Klatch—your chance to get up close and personal with 35 YA authors, including Printz award and honor authors Corey Whaley, Maggie Stiefvater, Craig Silvey, Daniel Handler, Christine Hinwood, and more!
- The Printz Award Program and Reception, with speeches from all of the honored authors.
- To add these events if you’ve
The position of Secretary was added to the YALSA Board, by membership vote, only four years ago. Until my term began, in 2008, the role of keeping our volunteer association’s formal record fell to YALSA staff. The addition of this position to the Board places that responsibility with membership; in addition, the position of Secretary adds another voice—and set of energies—to the Board’s Executive Committee.
I ran for the position of Secretary for several reasons: I had been on the YALSA Board when the idea of creating the position was under discussion and then development and I was a promoter of the concept. In addition, I have served in a few other elected offices, in other professional organizations, at the time when that position was first initiated, so I had a good sense of the kind of ground-breaking and flexibility the initial office-holder needed to bring to the effort of “launching” how the position might work to the advancement of the Board and membership as a whole.
Being Secretary for YALSA doesn’t mean slavishly recording each word that falls from anyone’s lips during the course of our meetings, but it does mean recording the official votes on any item before the formally sitting Board, as well as capturing the essence of discussions, noting attendance (both of Board members and any visitors) for the record, and taking part in discussions, as well as planning sessions undertaken by the Executive Committee.
As a long-time member of YALSA and a true believer in services to teens in libraries, my Board life is an important aspect of both my ongoing professional development and my identity. YALSA provides the stable presence of peers in a professional life that, for me, is otherwise regularly changing and on-the-go. YALSA members are the peers and colleagues to whom I turn for information, suggestions, guidance and mentoring opportunities. I consider it a privilege to help our association construct the new office of Secretary and look forward to seeing how it develops in terms to come under the creative work of future office holders.
This week YALSA Board members are discussing their experience serving on the Board. This post is one in that series.
This podcast is the final post in YALSA’s Life on the YALSA Board series. In this audio you’ll hear YALSA Director Sara Ryan, Fiscal Officer Mary Hastler, Secretary Francisca Goldsmith, and Immediate Past President Sarah Debraski discuss what it’s like to serve on the YALSA Board, the work that they do, the time that it takes, and why it’s a worthwhile experience.
Listen
If you have questions about serving on the YALSA Board feel free to contact any of the participants in this week’s roundtable. Their email addresses are available via the links above. You can also read about YALSA’s governance on the Association’s website.
If you would like to find out more about running for a YALSA Board position visit the nominating information on YALSA’s website, or contact the Chair of the 2011 YALSA Nominating Committee, John Sexton.
You can find more YALSA podcasts on the Association’s podcast page. Or you can subscribe to YALSA’s podcasts.
