Lorraine here again, back from the convention center, where I acted like a kid in a candy store around the free books… despite my vow to abstain this time – oh well!

I finally broke away to observe the YALSA Board Meeting for a little while – good stuff. First of all, is it customary for board meetings to limit discussion on each topic to ten minutes? I think that’s great – it really kept things moving along. I am considering stealing the concept for staff meetings.

I caught the last half of the “mega topic” – a (slightly) longer conversation about whether YALSA should expand their services to include older teens and 20-somethings. Services to this age group are lacking in most (but certainly not all) libraries, and I hope that YALSA will discuss this further. Check out an excellent article about underserved teens and young adults in Library Journal – The Disconnected: Who these 3.8 million people are, and why libraries need to help them by Kathy Degyansky. Although the article makes it clear that this is an issue that should be tackled by adult departments as well, any focus on the subject could be valuable and necessary.

Also of interest were the motions to create two new Discussion and Interest Groups: Readers Advisory and Summer Reading Programs. Cara Kinsey of NYPL proposed the Readers Advisory group, hoping to foster a community of both conference attendees and online participants who could discuss how to use the lists that YALSA generates to recommend reading to teens. Cara is particularly interested in the opportunity presented by an online community that could be created in Drupal or another format, allowing librarians to have sustained conversations about RA.  Cara stated that one of her inspirations was the PLA RA group, which boasts 300+ members.  The motion passed, and I’m looking forward to participating. The other group formed, Summer Reading Programs, will allow participants to discuss Summer Reading Programming in a separate venue from reading and book discussions.

Finally, the other item of interest discussed (for me, of course – the board seemed interested and engaged in everything they discussed – I think that’s another benefit of the 10-minute discussion rule) was the proposal by the Teens and Technology Committee to create a Library Technology Innovation award. The board seemed interested, but was concerned about funding and overlap with the Teen Tech Week mini-grants, so they sent the proposal back to be elaborated upon. I think the outcome there could be very interesting.

I’m hoping to pop back in on the board tomorrow, if time permits. And I’ll be at the YALSA discussion and interest groups thingamabob tomorrow at 4!