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I'm very proud of all the work that the 2014-2015 YALSA Board has accomplished, and wanted to share with you some of the highlights of our work from Annual last month.

• The board approved the proposed Professional Values document, which outlines nine core values that define professionalism for those who work for and with teens through libraries

• The board discussed Member Recruitment and directed the Standing Board committee on Member Recruitment & Engagement to explore the issue further and bring recommendations back to the board
• The board discussed ways that YALSA might better support members in their Collection Development  and content curation efforts and determined a first step would be to compile resources on YALSA’s wiki
• The board passed a policy designed to encourage a broader segment of the membership to participate in Selection Committees .  Beginning Feb. 1, 2016 any individual who has served on any YALSA award committee will need to wait two years before they’re eligible to serve on another YALSA award committee
• The board voted to establish an Award & Selection Committees Oversight Committee to help ensure that these committees have the support they need to run smoothly
• The board decided to put a proposal to the membership to vote on tying YALSA Dues to the Consumer Price Index, which will appear on the 2016 ballot
• The board got an update on what is being done to align resources and activities with the Futures Report
• The board approved a petition to establish a Teen Mental Health Interest Group.

To learn more, check out the Board agenda and documents as well as the meeting minutes.

At the conclusion of the board meeting, I turned over the reins to Candice Mack, who will be the awesome 2015 – 2016 YALSA President.

The Board’s next meeting will be at the 2016 ALA Midwinter Meeting, Jan. 8 – 12. We're looking forward to seeing YALSA members in Boston! And remember, YALSA's YA Services Symposium is coming up in Portland, Oregon, November 6 - 8.

Thanks for all that you do to make YALSA an amazing association and I enjoyed working with you all this past year!

Board Activities at ALA Annual

YALSA’s Board has been hard at work since Chicago; working on the strategic planning process, continuing the roll-out of activities related to the Futures report, planning for ALA Annual at San Francisco. And now, the Annual Conference is fast approaching, and I’m looking forward to the Printz Ceremony on Friday night, brunching with Sharon Draper at the Edwards Award Event on Saturday morning, talking with members at Saturday’s Member Happy Hour, and so much more. You can find the details about these events and many more YALSA activities on the YALSA wiki.

The Board agenda is up online, and nearly all of the documents have been posted. Members can check them out in advance and send comments or feedback to me at cinf0master at gmail (dot) com. If you’ll be in San Francisco for the Annual 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.
At Annual, the board will be discussing the continuing alignment of YALSA resources and activities with the vision for teen services laid out in the Futures Report. These include financial priorities, member recruitment, guidelines and best practices for youth services, and more. In fact, the mega issue the board will be discussing is a key part of these larger issues - LIS education and teen librarian job descriptions. One big question the board will be considering is, “How does YALSA ensure that individuals who are hired for teen services positions have the necessary skills and knowledge, as outlined in the Futures Report, they need to be successful?”

Also on the agenda for Annual

• Professional Values
• Member Recruitment
• Collection Development Guidelines
• Selection Committee Participation
• Selection Committee Oversight
• YALSA Dues
• Aligning resources and activities with the Futures Report

You can stay up to date with all the conversations by following Executive Director Beth Yoke (@yalsa_director), myself (@doseofsnark), 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.

YALSA’s Board of Directors met last weekend at the ALA Midwinter Meeting. Between the blizzard and the member Happy Hour and the number of other YALSA programs, I'm pleased with the time and attention the Board spent on big issues that drive and guide YALSA and our members.

Key activities included participating in training about outcomes-based planning and assessment and strategic planning. The board also took action in some key areas, including:

• Establishing a Board Diversity Taskforce
• Making official the virtual status of the Edwards and Popular Paperbacks Committees
• Approving the pilot of up to two more selection/awards committees in a virtual format
• Approving the focus for YALSA’s new Advocate’s Panel
• Approving the creation of job descriptions for each committee, jury and advisory board
• Approving the use of endowment funds to support grants for members (the only change to the original proposal is to use Leadership Endowment Funds for digital literacy grants to members instead of rolling the money back into the endowment’s principal)

The board also initiated discussion on some critical topics that may or may not lead to action down the road, depending on further information-gathering and discussions:

• Identifying budget priorities between now and June for FY16
• Helping members build skills and capacity needed to engage with the work of the organization
• Exploring and adopting the latest trends and best practices in delivering continuing education to members

The full minutes of the meeting will be posted in the Governance Section of the web site later this month.

One big thing that I would like members to know about the Board’s work at Midwinter is that the group came to the consensus to shift strategic planning in a different direction. The original vision for the Board’s time at Midwinter was to create a draft plan to share out with members; however, once the discussions started it became obvious that the Board first needs to step back and have a bigger picture discussion about YALSA—what its fundamental purpose and mission is and whether that needs to evolve based on the rapid changes in libraries.

The Board voted unanimously that the focus of their work and strategic planning needs to be grounded in the findings of “The Future of Library Services for and with Teens: a Call to Action” report. This document will drive all of the work that YALSA will do over the next few years and will be the foundation on which the new strategic plan is built. If you haven’t read the report yet, I encourage you to do so. Think about what you need in order to implement the recommendations in the report and come share your ideas and thoughts at a virtual town hall session on Feb. 24th from 3:00 – 4:00pm, eastern (no advance registration is required). The input of members is a vitally important part of the strategic planning process. Member feedback helps drive the Board’s decision making, so please make an effort to attend. There will be other opportunities besides the Feb. town hall, and we’ll keep you informed about those via the weekly e-news.

Lastly, I’d also like to take a moment to thank all of the members who participated in the Midwinter Meeting, whether it was volunteering in the booth, conducting committee work, participating in sessions or more.

I appreciate all the time and talent you give to YALSA!

It’s been a bit busy since October, but I still wanted to get this posted, especially since it impacts a lot of what the YALSA Board does at Midwinter, and Midwinter is fast approaching!

In October YALSA’s Executive Committee gathered in Chicago for two and a half days of meetings. The first day was a great chance to work across divisions, roundtables and ALA with presidents, president-elects, and past presidents, as well as ALA staff. Like YALSA, ALA is currently doing strategic planning, and that was the focus of our work together. The new plan from ALA will focus on three areas: advocacy, information policy and professional development. You can learn more and join the discussion in ALA Connect.

Once that was done, the Executive Committee focused on issues impacting YALSA. That included:

• Moving to an outcomes based approach to planning and assessment in YALSA
• Getting the new Margaret Edwards Trust up and running and discussing its potential for funding literacy related projects
• Prioritizing next steps for the association based on the recommendations in the report, “The Future of Library Services for and with Teens: a Call to Action”
• Talking about best practices in change management and how to incorporate them into the work of the Board
• Reviewing a report from the Student Member Engagement Taskforce
• Analyzing YALSA member survey results and discussing implications the results have on YALSA’s next round of strategic planning
• Reviewing a draft of YALSA’s upcoming Programming Guidelines, which we anticipate will be finalized by February
• Making preliminary plans for strategic planning activities for the Board and for members at the ALA Midwinter Meeting

The full agenda and accompanying documents are available in the Governance section of the web site for you to review. No final decisions were made, as the Executive Committee isn’t a decision making body, but these discussions will help inform future Board meetings and decision making. Many of these same topics will be on the Board’s agenda for Midwinter. In some cases the Executive Committee might choose to write up a request for Board action about an issue or idea that came out of the October discussions.

Right now, YALSA’s Board is developing the agenda for our meetings at Midwinter, and I’m busy asking Board members to complete documents or help address agenda items. If you have any ideas for agenda items or requests for board action, please contact me by the end of December. Once the agenda is finalized in January, I’ll share a blog post with you highlighting some of the issues and topics on the agenda.

Please don’t hesitate to contact me if you have any questions or comments.

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
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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

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, but here are some of the basics of what the President does, or might do, within a 30-day period.

• Once a week I have a phone call with YALSA’s Executive Director, Beth Yoke, to talk about projects each (both) of us is working on and to update each other on what’s happened since our previous call. These calls last about an hour and the conversation is really focused. So far in one month we’ve spent time following-up on projects, ideas, and topics discussed at 2009 Annual Conference; worked on a plan for ongoing and increased support for committee chairs; talked about a plan for providing ongoing training for YALSA Board members; discussed developing a YALSA 201 session at Midwinter that will provide information on how to get involved in YALSA leadership; and…..
• Held a call with YALSA’s Executive Committee (made up of the President, Past-President, President-Elect, Fiscal Officer, Secretary, and ALA Council Representative) to talk about how to move forward with work on a proposal (approved by the Board at Annual) to develop a follow-up plan related to YALSA’s selected list portfolio.
• Had phone conversations with a variety of Committee and Task Force Chairs about next steps in their work. This includes the Research, Strategic Planning, and Division Membership & Promotion Committee Chairs, and the Teen Space Guidelines Task Force Chair.
• Asked for feedback from Board and Executive Committee members on a wide-variety of topics including Committee Chair training and ongoing support, finances of the Division, and ongoing professional development for Board members.
• Wrote my first President’s column for YALS on the topic of risk. (The column will appear in the fall issue of the journal.)
• Made appointments to new Task Forces and Committees approved during Annual 2009, including Past President’s Lecture Committee and the Reader’s Choice Task Force.
• Emailed with a small group of library school students to find out their ideas for a networking program or event at Midwinter 2010 in Boston
• Provided quotes to YALSA’s Communications Officer, Stevie Kuenn, for press releases about YALS’ second consecutive win of an Apex Award, the selection of YALSA’s newest Spectrum Scholar, and the launching of YALSA’s research journal.

That’s just a brief look at how I’ve been spending time as YALSA President. While my experience as YALSA President-Elect and my involvement in the Division as a Board member and Committee Chair gave me some ideas about what life as President would be like, the real experience is somewhat different than what one knows when watching from the sidelines. It’s pretty exciting to be so directly involved in the work of the organization and I’m very much looking forward to 10 more months as packed with activity as this first one.

I will continue the practice started by a previous YALSA President a few years ago of publishing a monthly report with an overview of tasks completed during the previous month. As my term started in mid-July I did not publish a July report, the first one will be available on, or around, September 1.

If readers have any questions about life as YALSA President, feel free to ask in the comments of this post, or send me an email at [email protected].