Full disclosure: I only attended about an hour of this session, because I had to go check into my hotel midway through. I’m sorry I had to miss any of it!

Before I attended this session, all I knew about YA Galley was that it was a project that coordinated the distribution of publishers’ galleys among a select group of YA reading groups nationwide. Committee member Edith Cummings had e-mailed me a description of the project several months ago after I saw a reference to it in her signature file, but in spite of her fine explanation of the project, it was still sort of abstract to me. Here, I’ll share my current, much clearer understanding of the whole thing, followed by a brief summary of the discussion from yesterday.

The YA Galley Committee‘s function is “to facilitate the exchange of information and galleys of books published within the current and previous years among the voting teen group members as well as the non-voting members; to annually prepare the Teens Top 10 list for Teen Read Week; and to coordinate the public electronic vote.”

According to this handy 2004 YALSA press release I found using the new Google-based ALA search, the Committee also selects 15 teen reading groups to participate in the YA Galley Project (not to be confused with the Committee). Of the 15 reading groups, five groups nominate book titles for the Teens Top 10 list, which teens nationwide vote on annually during Teen Read Week (to be celebrated in 2005 from October 16-22).

So, to sum up:

Whew.

One publisher’s representative reported a 90% return rate on teen-written reviews of the galleys she’d sent out. One problem noted by both publishers’ representatives and librarians alike was the poor handwriting of some of the teen reviewers. To ameliorate this issue, there will now be an electronic option for submitting reviews. The electronic form will be housed at the YALSA site, and will have the same format as the current, print form. Once a completed electronic form is submitted by a teen reviewer, it will be automatically routedto a committee member, who will route it back to the librarian/group adviser to verify the teen reviewer’s participation in the project.

The YA Galley Committee Chair (whose name is presently unavailable at this URL, where a complete list of YALSA committee chairs will, I hope, soon be available) reported that 9 of the 15 group advisers were present at the meeting, and that the program will likely grow in size and scope as more groups apply to participate in years to come.

To groups interested in applying, the Chair recommended contacting the YALSA office for details on what is expected of a participating group and how to prepare to apply for participation.

Some groups’ advisers noted that there’s a bit of a lag between sending in nominations and when the nominated titles are publicized on the TTT website. This is being worked on, but the Chair noted that all nominated titles require a second to be fully nominated, and that an annotation must be prepared before the title is posted online, so that potential teen voters get a sense of what the book is about.

The annotations are written to incorporate the nominating teen’s comments, which is fairly thrilling to the nominators; one librarian/adviser noted that her teens wanted to frame their nominating sheets.

It’s important to note that TTT nominations do not have to come from YA Galley titles; any book a nominating teen sees, whether in her public or school library, in his friend’s locker, or at a local bookstore can be nominated. It just requires a second to make it to the ballot.

So, what happens to the galleys once the teen reader-nominators are done with them? Publishers set aside 75 copies of each title they’re sharing with the groups (that’d be 5 copies for each of the 15 groups). Julie Bartel of the Salt Lake City Public Library reported that her group donates all the galleys to SLC’s Homeless Youth Resource Center, whose users hang out at the library and who write a zine together, which the library photocopies for them.

Another library allows the first reader of each galley to write his or her name in the galley – that teen then has first right of refusal to keep it after everyone else in the reading group has read it.

Librarian/advisers reported using the teens’ responses as a selection tool, and publishers’ representatives reported using teen comments in their marketing of the books (with the teens’ permission).