February President’s Report
Just a quick update from a short month! The Board has been having quite a number of conversations related to strategic planning, and I invite you to the next town hall – May 14th at 8pm EST to be part of the discussions!
Activities
- Hosted YALSA member town hall to discuss member implementation of the recommendations from the Futures report.
- Led a Board Planning Session which focused on outcomes training and ways to incorporate outcomes into YALSA’s strategic planning process.
- Prepared board standing committees for revised quarterly chair report review process
- Appointed members to fill vacancies on various committees.
- Facilitated online discussion and voting for student engagement taskforce, programming guidelines, and the president’s program.
- Spoke with Santa Rose Press about teens and library usage
Updates
- Elections begin March 24 and run through May 1.
- Congratulations to the winners of YALSA’s writing awards: Shari Lee, Sarah Ludwig, Jaina Shaw, and Anna Tschetter.
- See you in San Francisco, Lisa Castellano, Lauren Lancaster, and Alicia Tate, the winners of YALSA’s Conference Travel Grants.
- Happy collection development to Kay Hones, Christy James, and Joan Yarsa, whose libraries are receipts of materials from YALSA’s Great Books Giveaway
- Special shout out to Sarah Hashimoto and Robin Fogle Kurz, the winners of YALSA’s Volunteer of the Year award.
- Peggy Hendershot brought diversity to the forefront of her teen discussions and won the MAE award for best literature program
- Smooth ordering to Brandt Ensor, Jean Forness, Graig Henshaw, Carolann MacMaster, Emma McCandless, Brooke Nelson, Emily Otis, and LaRaie Zimm, the winners of the MAE collection development grants.
Stats
- Membership - 5,168 members in Jan, up 1% over this time last year
- Donations - $2,029.21
During the next few days, YALSA’s Executive Director and I will be in Washington DC for National Library Legislative Day. We’ll be talking to Congressional Staff and policy makers at key foundations and organizations about the vital role libraries and library staff play in helping teens succeed in school and prepare for careers.
In order for our conversations to have any lasting impact though, they need to be supported by a grassroots effort from members and supporters. Without your participation in NLLD via Tweets #NLLD14), emails and phone calls, we’ll be just two people talking. We need you to amplify, to show that we are all working together to improve teens’ lives.
As of today, just over 300 individuals have signed on to support YALSA’s NLLD Thunderclap. While that’s a start, YALSA has 5,138 members. All of those members have friends, families, colleagues, and patrons who stand behind the important work that we do everyday. So please, take a few moments out of your day to help your teen patrons, your library and your livelihood. Sign our Thunderclap, reach out to your members of Congress and encourage others to do the same. Let’s leverage social media to amplify our voices and make real change for libraries and our patrons! The future of teens and libraries depends on us. #Act4Teens now.
Hey YALSA members, I want to hear from you!
In recent years, the President and Board of Directors have held virtual town halls to hear great ideas, get feedback on activities, and talk through goal areas in YALSA’s mission. On May 7th at 2 pm EST, we’d like take the broad view and talk through your overall YALSA experience. Specifically, we’ll be covering the following four questions:
- What is it about the organization that has earned your loyalty?
- What does YALSA do that frustrates you?
- What are three things that YALSA could do that would add the most professional value to the career of teen librarians?
- What are your three biggest concerns or needs?
Your thoughts can help YALSA become an even more responsive and relevant organization, so please, speak up! We’ll be meeting via this Adobe Connect space. Chat and audio will be available, but virtual bonus points will be given to those with a microphone too! Feel free to log-in at anytime in the next week to test your device’s capability and setup.
Thanks and I look forward to talking with you.
Shannon
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 – 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 – 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
