How to use this Page

Read It!

The most important thing when applying for a grant is to read the fine print. Knowing what will be expected will protect you from signing up for something that is unachievable. Below are several questions to ask when reviewing the guidelines of a grant.

1. What do you have to provide?
   • Is this a match grant?
   • Do you have to provide volunteer opportunities?
2. If a grant is through an organization, such as the ALA, do you have to be a member?
3.  Do you have to advertise? If so, in what ways?
   • Your library may have policy about how they advertise funding sources, such as corporations or for-profit institutions.
   • Some grants require recognition on all publicity materials, including print and digital materials. This may or may not be feasible for you to do.
4. What statistics will you have to collect?
   • Be sure that you can collect the statistics that are required. It is best to figure out ahead of time how you will collect all necessary stats.
5. What do you have to document in the final report?
   • If you know ahead of time, it is so much easier!
6. What is the project’s timeline going to look like?
   • Will this conflict with other responsibilities? Be sure to find out when application and final reports are due.
7. Is the effort and time worth the outcomes?
   • You know better than anyone if you can handle a project of this scope. Measure whether or not this will be worth it!

After assessing all these factors, one can knowledgably decide whether a particular grant is a good fit for your project. In next week’s post, using statistics in grant applications will be discussed. The hard facts can say it all, so statistics can really illustrate why your project is needed in the community. Stay tuned!

Jaclyn Lewis Anderson is the youth services director at the Madison County Library System.

A short list of tweets from the past week of interest to teens and the library staff that work with them.

Do you have a favorite Tweet from the past week? If so add it in the comments for this post. Or, if you read a Twitter post between October 30 and November 5 that you think is a must for the next Tweets of the Week send a direct or @ message to lbraun2000 on Twitter.

Plan It!

The best way to figure out how to get your project funded is to plan out all its details. I like to think of it as "the five W’s”: the who, what, where, when, and why. By thinking through all the details, you kill two birds with one stone.  You end up strategizing how to have successful outcomes, as well as gather all the information typically asked when seeking outside funding.

Who?

•       What age group or demographics will benefit?
•       What evidence shows how target audience will be affected?
•       What staff will be needed?

What?

•    What supplies, equipment, & training are needed?
•    Of these, what does the library already own?
•    What needs to be purchased? How much do these cost?

Where?

•    What is the general timeline?
•    Where will project take place?
•    Do you have the space that is needed?

When?

•    What are the start and end dates?
•    What days and times, if applicable?

Why?

•    Why is this project needed?
•    What are the expected outcomes?

It may seem tedious, but if you can answer these questions, then you are ready to write a grant. Next week, we will learn how to navigate all the details specific to each individual grant.

Jaclyn Lewis Anderson is the youth services director at the Madison County Library System.

A recent report from America’s Promise Alliance looks at four communities who strove to expand opportunities for their underserved students. With support from the Ford Foundation, these communities leveraged local resources to expand opportunities in a variety of ways.

America’s Promise Alliance is an organization, founded in 1997 with the support from former Secretary of State Colin Powell and previous presidents: Nancy Reagan (standing in for her husband Ronald Reagan), Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, George H.W. Bush, and Bill Clinton. The organization strives to create places and situations for students to succeed.

Their report, Expanded Learning, Expanded Opportunities, highlighted the community efforts and the six critical lessons gained from the project as a whole. The four communities that were the focus included:

• Grand Rapids, Michigan – they created a new network of community collaborations that worked in their school districts to tutor and mentor students.
• Louisville, Kentucky – where they sought to expand capacity and participation in their community. Through this expansion, they hoped to raise awareness about programs and resources available.
• Memphis, Tennessee – where they used innovation from the outside to help their schools on the inside. They called it the “Memphis Model” and had programs such as Peer Power.
• Rochester, New York – schools redesigned the learning day, incorporating community organizations into the normal school day for expanded opportunities for their students.

From these case studies, I think the biggest lesson they learned was about community collaboration and support. Their first critical lesson is that collaboration is key, but it’s a lot of hard work. However, when you leverage the resources you have and work towards a greater goal, there is a better chance of making a sustaining impact.

That’s where libraries can come in. I’ve written a bit on studies about after-school programs during my year blogging for YALSA. I kept asking questions to libraries in the field about how their libraries could play a role in after-school programming. However, after reading this report, I want to flip that question: how does the library become a key collaborator and partner? How do we engage actively with our community, especially our schools, and find ways to work within a district? How can we help raise and expand capacity within our libraries which will hopefully spread throughout the community? That might mean we need to “turn outward” (the buzzword right now) and do engagement outside the walls of our physical library space.

And YALSA has lots to say on community collaboration. From our Wiki section devoted to partnerships, to simply searching the YALSA blog with the tag of “collaboration” brings up great articles and examples from the past. The idea of collaboration even ties into the national campaign ALA is devoting time and energy to, Libraries Transform. (And even more specifically with ALA’s collaboration with the Harwood Institute, Libraries Transforming Communities).

My experience so-far in graduate school and my work experiences show that engagement works best when you are actively present and willing to listen. It seems in these case studies that community involvement was constant and this will hopefully lead to a sustained effort. What is important is that once connections are made, they still require work to keep those relationships vibrant. Every day we can have the choice to strengthen relationships and that takes time and effort. But as we can see from these case studies, it’s worth it.

America’s Promise Alliance also released a study this October looking at mentorships with high school students. There’s an interesting article from Huffington Post about one of the students who took part in the mentorship and I think this study is a nice compliment to their expanded learning report.

What do others think of these studies and how do you see your library engaging with the community as a whole?

Do you wish there was extra money to buy more items for your library’s teen section? Are your teens wishing they had a larger selection of materials at their public library? Then this might be your lucky day! The Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA) is now accepting applications for the BWI/YALSA Collection Development Grant. The $1,000 grant, made possible by BWI, will be awarded to up to two YALSA members to be used to support the purchase of new materials to support collection development in public libraries. The grant is also designed to recognize the excellent work of those YALSA members working directly with young adults ages 12-18 in a public library.

The committee is looking for proposals that present innovative ideas on how to expand young adult collections. Applicants will be judged on the basis of the degree of need for additional materials for young adults in their library, the degree of their current collection’s use, and the benefits this grant will bring to young adults. Other criteria, grant information and the application form can be found on the YALSA Awards and Grants website, http://www.ala.org/yalsa/awardsandgrants/bwi. Applications must be submitted online no later than December 1, 2015.

The first time I read The Future of Library Services for and with Teens, I was inspired. The second time I read the report, I was overwhelmed. The third time I read the report, I was determined. As I looked at the findings in the report, and the steps YALSA calls out to ready our libraries to serve teens into the future, I felt like I was drowning. How could I implement all of these changes? And then I remembered that I was not alone, I was surrounded by amazing library staff who could, actually they should, come on this journey with me. So I started a discussion centered on the findings in the report and it has been one of the most professionally satisfying experiences of my career. If you feel a little overwhelmed, or want to build support for the actions outlined in the support with your colleagues, I highly suggest starting a discussion group.

First, the report looks deceptively long, don’t let that scare you or your colleagues from diving in. The real meat of the report, that provides the best fodder for discussion is only 33 pages long, that is achievably short, even for the time poor. We broke our discussion up, planning to cover the whole report in three discussions of 30 minutes each (about 10 pages per meeting).

We started small, with a look at the executive summary and the introduction to the report. This generated more discussion than we could cover in 30 minutes (I might recommend at least an hour) but I would rather get the conversation started and have it continue in the staff room, at the desk, and over coffee breaks. I knew we should allow for thoughts of dissent, one of the things I love about my colleagues is our ability to challenge assumptions. We want to really break things down so we can understand them better. You will notice a lot of questions that allow for the voice of dissent.

Introduction

• How do recent cuts in school librarian jobs change our role as public librarians serving teens?
• Does the Library play a role in closing the achievement gap? Are we succeeded at that? What could we be doing better? Is that what our community needs? Is our community defined merely by our serving district, or does it expand beyond city/county/state borders?
• What are the negative influences on our teens that we can help alleviate or solve?
• Do you feel prepared to deliver culturally competent library service?
• What is our role in preparing teens for the workforce and making sure they have 21^st century skills and technological literacy?

Executive Summary

• The report states that libraries are grappling with diminishing resources. How are we facing diminishing resources to serve teens? What resources are diminishing?
• The report also states that we are serving a changing teen population. How is the teen population of our community changing? What have you noticed?
• If the diversity of teens is grown everywhere, how are we welcoming to all users? Have we changed anything to meet our new users where they are? What do these demographic changes mean for how we serve teens?
• How do you see rapid technology adoption impacting our services to teens?
• Do you feel it is the library’s role to help prepare teens for the workforce with critical skills? What skills do they need? How are we already meeting those needs? Where and how do we need to grow capacity?
• How do you feel about this statement, “…[The library] needs to evolve into a place, physical and virtual, where individuals can learn how to connect and use all types of resources, from physical books to apps to experts in a local, regional, or national community. Libraries must leverage new technologies and become kitchens for ‘mixing resources’ in order to empower teens to build skills, develop understanding, create and share, and overcome adversity.” How do we already do this? What challenges do we face?
• YALSA highlights the library’s critical role of providing an education system outside of formal schools. Are we leveraging that opportunity? How so? What would it mean for us to become the center for community education?
• Who is our audience? How do we balance outreach and serving those who come through the door?
• YALSA calls for skilled staff to act as mentors, coaches and connectors. How are we primed to do that? What challenges do we face?
• What do you think about Outreach as a tool to measure need in the community? Is that how we use it?
• What kind of policies do we have around serving teens? Are they flexible and easy to update as YALSA calls for? How can we impact change?
• Do we take a whole Library approach to planning, delivering and evaluating teen services?
• What does “literacy as a social act” mean? Are we serving our community in this way? Are our teens literate by this definition? What can we do to influence that?

With the care of passionate librarians, my colleagues created such a thoughtful and meaningful discussion around the report and these questions. We really came to focus on the ideas of being culturally competent and the changing demographics of our teen community. After our first discussion, several staff dove into Department of Education statistics about the schools nearest their location, and municipal statistics on poverty and race. They prepared reports for our next discussion over pages 4-12 (which will be summarized in part 2 of this series!).

As I continue these blog series about The Future of Library Services for and with Teens, I am curious what conversations you are having around the report? Which one of these discussion questions really piques your interest?

A big thank you to my colleagues who have participated in the discussion. I have the advantage of working for a library system. We have over 300 employees, staffing 13 libraries, serving an county of over 500,000 residents. I get to work with almost 40 passionate youth services staff members who have really embraced our discussions around the support.  We have a wide variety of voices and perspectives in our department, which is one of my favorite things about our staff. Their insights have challenged me to look deeper into the report, think differently about it and notice things I had skimmed over on previous reading.

The First Step

Are you interested in applying for grants, but don’t know how to begin? This is a series of weekly posts that will make the grant writing process more transparent. Grants can give you the funds you need for a variety of projects. Creating a new Teen Space, buying additional shelving, investing in technologies, and funding a series of programs are all viable projects for grants.

Before investing a ton of time, check in with your supervisor! See if your project is something that your supervisor will support. Even if your supervisor supports the idea of the project, be sure to convey that you want to seek outside funding and that you are interested in writing a grant. You may or may not be allowed to write a grant, so this bit of clearance is crucial! Once you get the green flag, then you can get started.

This first post will review what types of outside funding are available. By knowing more about the options, you can find the funding that best suits your project. There are two major types of funding outside of a library’s operating budget: grants and sponsorships. Within those options are a variety of subsets.

Table 1:

Although there is always the exception, there are basic differences between grants and sponsorships. Knowing these differences will also help you better decide which path to take.

Table 2: Grants vs. Sponsorships

Great way to obtain small amounts of funding without too much trouble.

After reviewing which types of funding are available, you may decide that a grant is best for you. Next week, we will review how to lay out all the details of your project. Knowing these details are imperative in the actual grant writing process. Even if you decide to go with a sponsor, this information is still very helpful! See you next week!

Jaclyn Lewis Anderson is the youth services director at the Madison County Library System. 

A huge thank you to everyone who volunteered by the Oct. 1 deadline to serve on YALSA selection, award, and strategic committees and task forces! I'm still busy reading through hundreds of committee volunteer forms and hope to have the process finalized by the end of the month.

In the meantime, don't forget that as YALSA members, you're also a member of ALA! And that means that you can apply to be on an ALA or Council committee. Serving on an ALA or Council committee provides members with leadership training, networking opportunities and experience in working on specific association topics.  Additionally, your service on ALA committees strengthens YALSA by ensuring that the Division is well-represented throughout the organization.

Express your interest in​ ALA ​committee service by filling out a volunteer form. When you click “submit” at the end, your completed form will be sent to ALA President-Elect Julie Todaro for consideration by either the Committee on Appointments (for ALA and Joint Committees) or the Committee on Committees (for Council Committees). The committees will carefully review your completed form and consider your requests and preferences. This form closes on Friday, November 6, 2015, and appointments are made throughout the spring of 2016, with terms starting July 1, 2016. To volunteer, please complete and submit the form electronically (be sure to select ALA in the drop-down menu on the main form to volunteer for both ALA and Council committees).

Potential ALA Committee members should:

• Consider whether they can attend Annual Conferences and Midwinter Meetings while serving on a committee in order to participate in the F2F meetings and activities of the committee.  Check with the current chair to see if attendance is required.
• Have an interest in the work of the committee, and relevant experience or skills to contribute to the group.
• Have the time and skills needed to work between conferences via email, conference calls, Google docs, Skype, etc.

Additional information:

• Committee descriptions are found on the ALA website.
• Members may serve on no more than three committees (across ALA, Divisions, etc.) at a time, and may only serve on one Council committee at a time.
• Consider volunteering as an intern! Serving as an intern is a great way to gain valuable ALA experience. The Intern Program is open to any ALA member who has never been appointed to a position on an ALA or Council Committee, nor held an elected office within ALA or any unit of ALA (including Divisions, Round Tables, etc.).
• Please note that the italicized committees below have specific requirements. Please review the text in parentheses before volunteering for these committees.

The ALA Committees are:

• Accreditation
• American Libraries Advisory
• Awards
• Chapter Relations
• Conference
• Constitution and Bylaws
• Election (members responsible for travel costs to ALA Headquarters in Chicago one day per year in late April or early May)
• Human Resource Development and Recruitment Advisory
• Information Technology Policy Advisory
• Literacy
• Literacy and Outreach Services Advisory
• Membership
• Membership Meetings
• Public and Cultural Programs Advisory
• Research and Statistics
• Rural, Native and Tribal Libraries of All Kinds
• Scholarships and Study Grants
• Training, Orientation and Leadership Development
• Website Advisory

The Council Committees are:

• Budget Analysis and Review
• Council Orientation (current or former ALA Councilors are desired)
• Diversity
• Education
• Intellectual Freedom
• International Relations
• Legislation
• Library Advocacy
• Organization
• Policy Monitoring (only ALA Councilors with terms through 2018 are eligible)
• Professional Ethics
• Public Awareness
• Publishing
• Resolutions (must have experience as an ALA Councilor or have served on a Council Committee)
• Status of Women in Librarianship

The ALA Joint Committees are:

• ALA-Children's Book Council (meets twice a year in NYC and members cover their own travel costs)
• ALA Society of American Archivists/American Association of Museums

For technical assistance or for more information on the committee appointments process, contact Kerri Price, staff liaison to the Committee on Appointments and the Committee on Committees.

A short list of tweets from the past week of interest to teens and the library staff that work with them.

Do you have a favorite Tweet from the past week? If so add it in the comments for this post. Or, if you read a Twitter post between October 17 and October 22 that you think is a must for the next Tweets of the Week send a direct or @ message to lbraun2000 on Twitter.

A short list of tweets from the past week of interest to teens and the library staff that work with them.

Do you have a favorite Tweet from the past week? If so add it in the comments for this post. Or, if you read a Twitter post between October 9 and October 15 that you think is a must for the next Tweets of the Week send a direct or @ message to lbraun2000 on Twitter.

According to the 2013-2014 Core Values for the Teen Services Profession, developed by the Young Adult Library Services Association’s (YALSA) Professional Values Task Force, there are “nine core values that define professionalism for those who work for and with teens through libraries. ¹” One of the nine core values is “Compassion,” where librarians who work with teens “strive to identify with others’ experiences. Shows concern, empathy, and consideration for the needs and values of others.^” Within this value, librarians will demonstrate the following:

• Communicates effectively, both verbally and non-verbally, with others, taking into consideration individual differences in learning styles, language, and cognitive abilities, etc.
• Builds and maintains knowledge of teens’ social, emotional, mental, and physical development and how they shape the teen experience
• Strives to understand teens' lives from their perspective in order to create genuine connections
• Places the needs of teens above one’s own
• Provides services for and with underserved and underrepresented teen populations

After reading through this report, the one core value that speaks the loudest to me is compassion. If we, as teen librarians, were to prioritize these values, compassion needs to be the number one value that we need to act upon; not only is compassion the key to solidifying honest relationships with teen patrons, these connections provide us with the information and insight to support many facets of teen services including connected learning. According to The Future of Library Services For and With Teens: A Call to Action: “To support their learning—personal, work-related, and academic—library staff must connect with teens as individuals. As one participant noted: “Many teens don’t have relationships with non-supervisory adults…teens need more adults who are not “in charge of charge” of them” (2014, p.10). By showing compassion, we are conveying to teens that we are genuinely interested in their opinions and thoughts, which is why we develop teen advisory boards and similar programs. These programs allow us to build rapport with teen patrons because we are providing a dedicated forum for teens that tell them that we do value their input. If we are unable to create these kinds of avenues, we need to get up from behind the reference desk and actually talk to teens when they walk into the library. What exactly do we talk about? Talk about anything and everything! If you have a question about the latest trends, or don’t understand what’s going on Twitter, they are going to be your best resources. More importantly, if we want to know about the school curriculum, teens will tell us all about their assignments, which help us purchase materials they will need. In fact, about six years ago, I remember working with one teen who was so painfully shy that he couldn’t look at me when I said “Hello.” After a few weeks of trying to have a conversation with him, he opened up and was literally my go-to for everything anime and technology. In fact, he ended up joining the Teen Advisory Board, which was super awesome because he brought a ton of his friends to our events and some of them joined as well! It is amazing how word of mouth spreads and, if you can influence one teen, they will tell their friends, which means great turnouts for events and a whole army of minions as my colleagues once said.

As we build working relationships with teens, we also need to understand that teens want to relate and confide in us. Along with wanting to be seen as individual, teens need an adult to seek advice and to listen to them. In other words, they are searching for a neutral third party that isn’t exactly a parent, but not a stranger. When teens confide in us, they trust and value our opinion because they know that we have compassion and we are mentors who genuinely care about them. At the same time, we also need to draw clear boundaries. In other words, if teens can’t behave, they will suffer the consequences; if teens need help, we will do everything we can in our power to make sure they get what they need. It’s not always easy dealing with goofy teenagers, but, with a little love, patience, respect, and kindness, teens will see that they have someone in the library that will help them succeed and win at life.

References:

1. http://www.ala.org/yalsa/sites/ala.org.yalsa/files/content/YALSA_CoreProfessionalValues.pdf
2. http://www.ala.org/yaforum/sites/ala.org.yaforum/files/content/YALSA_nationalforum_Final_web_0.pdf

A short list of tweets from the past week of interest to teens and the library staff that work with them.

Do you have a favorite Tweet from the past week? If so add it in the comments for this post. Or, if you read a Twitter post between August 28 and September 4 that you think is a must for the next Tweets of the Week send a direct or @ message to lbraun2000 on Twitter.

This semester I’m enrolled in a Collaborations in Feminism and Technology class. It parallels the larger organization, FemTechNet. During our most recent class, our discussion turned to a frequently talked about: children/teens and technology. What sort of access to technology should they have and how will they use it?

Part of our class veered towards the idea of technocentrism (technology is the center of our world and it controls us. See Seymour Papert’s paper to read more) or technological determinism (essentially get on board with technology’s pace or forever be left behind). We discussed just giving kids and teens technology and counting on them to “just know” how to use it. We discussed restricting access because they aren’t old enough to really know how to use technology. And we discussed that teens simply don’t understand the permanence of putting something online.

However, some of my classmates (myself included) were not quick to jump aboard the technocentrism train of thought. I firmly ground myself in the idea of living in a socio-technical system – where I impact and shape technology just as much as technology is shaping and changing me. People in positions of power and privilege are making decisions on how they design and create technology and that has impacts on how we use and think about technology. So shouldn’t we be having some of these conversations with the teens we interact with?

I think we should take some responsibility for this education and problem posing of technology and its impacts. Because in many ways, the decisions we are making affect how current and future teens will use and think about technology (and the digital footprint that has been involuntarily created for them). Recently I’ve been hooked on WNYC’s podcast, Note to Self with Manoush Zomorodi. The focus of this podcast is our relationship with technology and a recent episode lets us hear first hand from a teen interviewed on her views of technology (and smart phones). Teens are actively using technology and making decisions about it and we should respect and think about those decisions (Manoush also has a great “back to school tech” post with links on [mainly] managing kids and educational apps and technology). These posts and podcasts made me think of participatory action research that people like Rachel Magee and others are doing that digs deeper into the relationships teens have with technology (a field I’m very interested in. Also Rachel is a new faculty member at the University of Illinois so I’ve been learning more about her work).

So how do we do this? How do we have those conversations? How do we talk about our permant identity on the Internet? How do we help teens to see the ways in which we shape and our shaped by technology. My main idea is through dialogue – both informal and formal. Everything from a passing comment to longer workshops (I wrote earlier this year about a week long Twitter workshop that could be led to show how information is distributed, biased, and controlled through Twitter and what users we select to follow). Or…how could we incorporate resources like YALSA’s 2012 Issue Brief on Keeping Teens Safe Online (or revise it for 2015)? How might we incorporate idea of connected learning into these conversations for a greater and long lasting impact? How can we take this Social Media Guide and turn it into an engaging program or informal conversation? Granted, I know these programs or conversations would take time – time to plan, time to think through the ideas, time to get to know the teens, and time to actually implement these ideas (I get a little tired thinking about how I would do that once I enter the working world of Library Land). But, what keeps me going is the idea that we too can impact technology. The sooner we have those conversations with our teens, the sooner we start engaging in that critical dialogue, the sooner we can start changing the world.

How do you do this in your libraries with your teens? How do you not get trapped in the idea of technocentrism and instead, strive to empower teens to think critically about technology and their technological footprint?

A short list of tweets from the past week of interest to teens and the library staff that work with them.

Do you have a favorite Tweet from the past week? If so add it in the comments for this post. Or, if you read a Twitter post between September 19 and September 25 that you think is a must for the next Tweets of the Week send a direct or @ message to lbraun2000 on Twitter.

A short list of tweets from the past week of interest to teens and the library staff that work with them.

Do you have a favorite Tweet from the past week? If so add it in the comments for this post. Or, if you read a Twitter post between September 11 and September 17 that you think is a must for the next Tweets of the Week send a direct or @ message to lbraun2000 on Twitter.

Have you been looking for a way to get involved in YALSA but not sure where to start? Try volunteering for a taskforce. The nice thing about a taskforce is the work is focused and is carried out over a shorter period of time than a committee. It also gives you an opportunity to work with and get to know some of your fellow YALSA members and increase your own professional skills at the same time.

This is my second term serving as Chair of the Mentoring Taskforce and I found it to be a very rewarding experience. The taskforce reviews the applications submitted for YALSA's Mentoring Program and matches mentors and protégés. I couldn't have asked for a better group of people on the taskforce and I enjoyed learning about the people who applied for the mentoring program. I also gained a sense of accomplishment by getting involved and giving back to YALSA and knowing these mentoring program participants will learn from each other.

So what was it like being on a virtual taskforce? We did most of our work through email. This allowed us to work at our own pace when we had time and eliminated time zone conflicts. Even though our taskforce worked asynchronously and we had a very short turnaround time to complete our matches, everyone was quick to respond to communication and we stayed on track. In early July I asked the committee members to introduce themselves to each other via email so we all had a feel for who we were working with. By the last week of July we were reviewing suggested tasks and matching protégés with mentors. We only had the information provided in the applications to decide who would make the best matches. We turned in our final matches by the second week in August. I feel good knowing that we were able to work so efficiently without ever meeting face-to-face.

If you are thinking about getting involved but haven’t wanted to make the commitment, I would highly recommend volunteering for the mentoring taskforce, or any taskforce, when you see the call go out via the weekly YALSA e-news. It’s a great way to give back to YALSA and meet other like-minded professionals without making a huge time commitment. You don’t have to commit to travel, either, since virtual members are not required to attend ALA conferences. Who knows? Maybe it will inspire you volunteer for more committees or even to run for the YALSA Board! Check out the different ways you can get involved at: http://www.ala.org/yalsa/getinvolved/getinvolved

Gail Tobin is Branch Coordinator at the Schaumburg Township District Library. She is the current Chair of the Mentoring Taskforce and a former YALSA Board member.

What do accountability, excellence, innovation, and social responsibility have to do with the teen services profession? The quick and easy answer is a lot. However, a more specific answer is that these 4 ideas are a few of the Core Values listed in YALSA's new Core Professional Values for the Teen Services Profession. This Professional Values document was published by YALSA last month after a year-long development process by the association's Professional Values Task Force. The Task Force began their work after discussions by the YALSA Board of Directors during their 2013 Annual Conference meetings The Board wanted to develop and support the professional development of library staff serving teens and to help others in the library profession understand the value of what library staff working with and for teens work towards every single day of the year.

The document, a one of its kind in the area of library teen services, is an excellent framework for the values that all those working with teens in libraries should embrace. Not only does it list the Core Values but it includes ways of demonstrating those values. For example, if you demonstrate Innovation, which is defined in the document as:

Approaches projects and challenges with a creative, innovative mindset

Then you demonstrate that by:

• Recognizes that learning comes from failure and experimentation
• Demonstrates a willingness to take calculated risks to improve teen services

It is important for all staff working with and for teens in libraries to go through the Core Values and assess strengths and weaknesses in demonstrating each value. Weaknesses aren't a bad thing as knowing where you are weak gives you the chance to find out what to improve on in order to serve teens even more successfully. Actually, the Excellence Core Value includes continuous learning as an area to focus on:

"Engages in acquisition of new knowledge throughout one’s career" as a demonstration of that value.

Along with assessing your own personal strengths and weaknesses related to the YALSA Core Professional Values, it can also be really useful to use the document as a way to help colleagues, administrators, trustees, principals, superintendents, community members, funders, and more understand what you do and why you do it. You can go over the document with them or make it a point to highlight different sections of the document for them over several months. You can talk with them about how you already achieve the values and what you are working on in order to do an even better job to support the needs of teens in the community. You can give those you talk with ideas about how they can support the Core Values by demonstrating at least some of the practices outlined in their own interactions with and for teens.

The Core Values are a core tool for you to use as you continue to work with and for teens in your community. Use it professionally as a way to make sure you are doing what you need to do and as a way to inform and advocate for the value of teen services in the library and the community at-large.

A short list of tweets from the past week of interest to teens and the library staff that work with them.

Do you have a favorite Tweet from the past week? If so add it in the comments for this post. Or, if you read a Twitter post between July 24 and July 30 that you think is a must for the next Tweets of the Week send a direct or @ message to lbraun2000 on Twitter.

I’ve been blogging for YALSA for almost year. Crazy to think I’m starting my second year of graduate school. Those job descriptions that come into my email box seem a little more real, and a little more attainable.

What makes me so excited about heading into the professional world of librarianship is when I get the chance to interact with other librarians, librarians that have experience and insight, insight that I hope to one day have. While I know they, technically, are my colleagues, I still feel a little out of their league. However, that doesn’t stop me from soaking up as much knowledge from them as I can.

I got an opportunity to meet a handful of other librarians (and YALSA) bloggers last week. Crystle, our blog manager, had arranged some Google Hangouts as a way for us bloggers to meet each other. I logged on Monday night, not quite sure what to expect.

Our hangout also had another purpose than simply seeing each other on our screens — we were discussing The Future of Library Services for and with Teens: A Call to Action. It was a report that resonated with me; many of the ideas proposed are ones that are in line with the readings I had done for my community engagement class this spring, along with the work I did with elementary students last year. I have found that if you let the interests and passion of the people you’re working with guide action, then we are setting ourselves up for success.

As we walked through the first few sections of the report, I was content to just listen to the librarians, who spoke about previous experiences with teens. I felt lucky to be a part of a conversation where I heard about the reality of things in library land; while we want to always think that reports and theory are accurate, we know that at the end of the day, real life isn’t as set in stone or black and white. It felt like I was getting a peak into what my job might be like in a year and frankly, it was incredibly inspiring and exciting. I wished we were all sitting around a table at a coffeeshop, where we had more time to share experiences and talk through new ideas.

This hangout reminded me the power of networking. While I didn’t speak much, I was still a part of this conversation. I was learning and processing and thinking about the ways in which these ideas could be put into place in my own practice as a librarian. I look forward to another year of YALSA blogging and navigating my way through teen librarianship.

A short list of tweets from the past week of interest to teens and the library staff that work with them.

Do you have a favorite Tweet from the past week? If so add it in the comments for this post. Or, if you read a Twitter post between August 14 and August 20 that you think is a must for the next Tweets of the Week send a direct or @ message to lbraun2000 on Twitter.

Which young people in your community could be most positively impacted by services that your institution currently provides or could provide?

Are there foster youth, homeless teens, teen parents, teens from military families, incarcerated youth, disabled teens, LGBTQ teens, immigrant teens, teen English Language Learners, or teens from various cultural, ethnic, racial or socioeconomic backgrounds in your communities who could really use the library’s help to succeed?

What would that assistance or those services look like?

My YALSA presidential initiative, “3-2-1 IMPACT! Inclusive and Impactful Teen Library Services,”
focuses on building the capacity of libraries to plan, deliver and evaluate programs and services for and with underserved teen populations. It is a call to action to all of our members to take a close look at our communities, identify service gaps and address needs by using or contributing to YALSA resources like the Future of Library Services for and with Teens report, Teen Programming Guidelines, our new Teen Programming HQ and more.

Visit YALSA's wiki to find and share information about serving diverse teens and building cultural competence. For a list of selected resources relating to building inclusive services for and with teens, check out this flyer (.pdf).

Other activities that we hope to work on this year include collecting stories from members who are reaching out to underserved teen populations and sharing best practices and/or advocacy messages, creating spaces or pathways for members who are focusing on the same teen population to connect with one another, providing continuing education to help members reach out to specific populations and also gain leadership and cultural competence skills/knowledge, and compile existing and/or create new resources to help members serve various underserved teen populations.

As YALSA President, I’m excited about harnessing the passion, energy and activism among all of our members to help create positive, inclusive, impactful change for and with the teens that we serve in our communities. I’m looking forward to working with all of you and to the amazing work that we are all going to do together this year.

A short list of tweets from the past week of interest to teens and the library staff that work with them.

Do you have a favorite Tweet from the past week? If so add it in the comments for this post. Or, if you read a Twitter post between July 10 and July 16 that you think is a must for the next Tweets of the Week send a direct or @ message to lbraun2000 on Twitter.

This post was based on my presentation at the ALA Annual Convention, What I Stopped Doing: Improving Services to Teens by Giving Things Up. Slides for the presentation can be found on Slideshare or HaikuDeck.

In order to do improve library service to teens, we have to work differently -- and in order to do that, we have to stop doing some of what we’re currently doing.

From discussion at Annual and among colleagues in my personal network, this is a topic that resonated with large numbers of staff -- not just the necessity of giving things up, but the importance of continuing to talk loudly and proudly about the things we stopped doing. In youth services this is especially important -- often we are solo practitioners who were hired to work with a broad range of ages -- 0-18 in some cases.

Discontinuing or re-assigning tasks and services is challenging, but it’s critical to improving library services to teens -- and it’s an important leadership quality. While there is no one formula that will work for every library or community, when we’re ready to think about what we can stop doing, reflect again on YALSA’s Future of Library Services for and with Teens report - it sets a frame for the work that’s most important to consider discontinuing or doing differently.

While within the report there are five areas for change, my presentation focused on two areas of the report---creating a whole library/whole school approach to serving teens and building partnerships outside the library walls.

As library staff who work with teens, we are often hired to manage and deliver services to an age group that very few other staff members want to manage. This reality puts us at risk for feeling like we have to do it all -- that the entire future of teens in our library rests on our shoulders. And sometimes that can be an empowering feeling -- while there is a lot of we can’t control, it can be nice to be totally in charge of something. But this is not realistic or sustainable -- and doesn’t improve our library’s service to teens in the long term. We are generally able to act as a facilitator -- instead of an expert -- in working with teens in program settings -- but what we acted more like that with our colleagues and supported them in building relationships with teens, managing teen behavior and delivering services to teens? This will be slow work; we won’t necessarily see immediate change.

In order to strengthen our services to teens, we also have to get out of our library and build partnerships with other youth-serving organizations in the community. While library staff serving teens are not always in control of their time, there are some things we can consider stopping in order to find more time for partnership building:

* Lots of school visits. What would happen if we didn’t do them for a year? Would our participation or attendance decrease? What if we re-directed this energy into specific groups, schools or organizations we aren’t seeing but want to? We’ll never know what actions are effective and what actions we just assume are effective because we’ve always done them until we stop doing some of them and see what happens.

* Teen programs where nobody comes or attendance is inconsistent. Without a more solid sense of community needs, partners to help co-create and promote and young people in leadership roles, our programs can be hit or miss. What if we took a break from programs and spent time strengthening an important partnership?

* Stop working the desk. If we’re in a supervisor or manager role, think about taking our most experienced, talented and possibly-getting-bored teen librarians and stop wasting their time with auto repair questions -- set them loose in the community. Other library staff will definitely complain about this -- but fairness doesn’t mean treating everyone exactly the same, it means giving each individual what they personally need to be successful.

* Stop putting together displays or booklists and delegate these to other staff members, volunteers or young people in our libraries.

* Stop running book clubs in our libraries. Look instead in our communities for partners who say, “my kids hate reading” and wow them when we bring books their young people will enjoy.

Some things session participants mentioned they changed or were considering changing:
* Discontinued STEM programs because attendance was poor
* Reduced the number of storytimes offered
* Stopped preschool storytimes because 3-4 years olds were in preschool.
* Quit supervising all the teen employees herself and divided their supervision among colleagues.
* Stopped doing regular media classes in the school library.

Since each library’s situation and community are different, not all of these examples will work for everyone and some will seem almost impossible. Before putting them all aside, we should take some time to reflect on our personal feelings about the examples above -- and about other things we’ve been thinking about discontinuing. What’s standing in our way of thinking differently? Are there really factors beyond our control - or is it ourselves getting in our way? We can’t give up everything we love doing, but often there are tasks we know we SHOULD stop doing, but don’t. Be kind to ourselves; take small steps, but keep going and give our change a chance.

If we decide to meet with our Teen Advisory group every month instead of every week, think about the impact on teen patrons -- they will likely need a transition period. What other kinds of support will they need from us for this change?

We’ll continue to need support for our work and may need support in prioritizing differently. Our colleagues or supervisor may be able to help, or we may need to find resources on our own. Some past Level Up Your Leadership Skills blogs that are especially relevant to this topic are:

Ways to Prioritize Your Work
Build Your Network

Stopping current work is challenging in libraries, but it’s not an option, it’s a necessity. As communities and patrons change around us, we have to be able to let our old role go in order to embrace what’s next. What are you going to stop doing?

Summer is here and at least in Illinois, it’s heating up fast! With June halfway over, we know that ALA Annual is on the horizon. And what says summer better than San Francisco, California? The theme this year is “Transforming libraries, ourselves.” With 25,000 library affiliated folks coming to town, it’s an event you don’t want to miss!

Unfortunately, I’ll be diligently working in Illinois during ALA Annual, but that doesn’t mean I have to miss out on the conversations. If you’re like me and won’t be in San Fransisco, here’s a guide to staying in touch, from a distance.

If you’re looking for a broad overview of the conference:

1. Get on Twitter. One thing I’ve learned time and time again this past year is that librarians are active on Twitter. Follow the conference Twitter account @alaannual or the general hashtag for the event is #alaac15. Some sessions have specific hashtags, which you can find in the scheduler section of Annual’s website. If you have time to get on early, try to scout out some fellow librarians who will be at ALA Annual. They can be your eyes and ears during the conference.

Note: It’s really hard to actively follow hashtags on Twitter’s general account. I suggest downloading Tweet Deck or use the website Tweet Chat to track the event. I’m partial to Tweet Deck because you can follow multiple hashtags while watching your feed and seeing who is replying to your tweets. It can be a lot of information but a great way to really stay in the loop.

1. Check out ALA’s other social media platforms. Following #alaac15 on Instagram or ALA’s general account for visuals of the event. ALA also has an active Tumblr and Facebook. See this general handout for all the handles and account links.

If you’re looking to dive a little deeper into ALA Annual:

1. Look at the ALA Annual highlights to get an idea for what’s happening during the six days of the conference. So much is going on during those six days, it’s easy to get overwhelmed. This is especially good if you want to look at the big speakers during the conference.
2. Next, take a look at the ALA Annual program book, which is in PDF form on the web. If you’re just interested in the various sessions, skip part I of the program book and jump to part II.
3. In part II, the sessions are broken up program content areas (most revolving around the idea of transformation). I suggest looking for sessions either within a content area or searching (love Control F when searching PDFs) to look for keywords of topics you’re interested in.
4. Once you’ve got a list of interesting sounding sessions, go back to the Scheduler and look up them up. Some sessions have a specific hashtag to follow. I also have been looking up the speakers on Twitter, both for me to follow right now and then during ALA.
5. When looking on the Scheduler, see if any resources, handouts, or additional links have been posted. You might find access to great materials before the conference even begins!
6. Put the session time in your calendar so you know when to be more actively checking Twitter and other social media sites.

Hope that helps and here are some of the sessions I’m hoping to virtually check out:

• DiverseZineties; Promoting Diversity and Self-discovery Through Making Zines with Teens, Saturday, June 27
• Library of the Future—Learning with the Participatory Library at Cedar Rapids Public Library, Saturday, June 27. This was the public library I went to as an undergrad; their new library is gorgeous. Opportunity does arise from tragedy. 
• Voices of Youth: Community partnerships for video production, Saturday, June 27
• From Maker to Make-HER: Leveling the STEM Playing Field for Girls, Sunday, June 28
• Seeing Through Walls: Library-Based Video Conferencing to Connect Kids with Parents in Jail, Sunday, June 28. I worked for The Director of Outreach Services at Brooklyn Public Library. He’s an amazing librarian and his team is doing incredible things with outreach and engagement at the Brooklyn Public Library.
• Yik Yak and the Academic Library, Sunday, June 28 (Sunday Ignite Session topic)
• Naked Truth: connect.create.contribute, Monday, June 29
• What do LIS Students Really Think About Their Education?, Monday, June 29. These are my peers and I did attend the LIS Symposium on Education [it was awesome!]

I’m excited about ALA Annual and the chance to participate virtually. I’ll be tweeting from @hailthefargoats and hope you’ll join the conversation too!

By Kelly Czarnecki and Marie Harris

In the fall of 2014 our library in Charlotte, NC applied for a grant with the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation to fund Idea Box, a Makerspace in our downtown location. The funding was to be used for equipment as well as consultation to help meet our goals:

• Generate new energy around this lifelong learning center
• Attract new users; especially those ages 19-34
• Be a place where anyone can bring their ideas to life
• Build partnerships/collaborations with the local maker community
• Create a prototype space within the library that can be refined and expanded on with testing and use

As the generous funding that was received did not cover staffing, administration appointed two existing staff as project leads whose task it was to have the space open and operable by January 2015. They in turn went through the process of establishing a dedicated Makerspace (now called Idea Box) team that would focus on developing policies for the space, programming, and focusing on bringing our target audience through our doors. Fortunately, our organization has over seven years of experience in a similar space at one of our branches for youth where film and music creation and editing has been a part of how teens are served, and we had a staff of many talents to choose from.

While the staff were unexperienced as trained Makers, they were definitely enthusiastic and brought with them experience in everything from film making to graphic design. Once the team of ten was established through an online application process that asked questions related to their experience with the kinds of activities and technologies the space would have, the task of how to get everyone on board with knowing how the major equipment works was going to be the next step in the process. Did the secret lie in an Arduino code that you can plug the library employee into? Or do you start from scratch and prototype a librarian Maker in Inkscape (a free software design program) to cut out on the laser cutter?

Here in Charlotte, NC, we opted for training, old fashioned practicing and a bit of trial by fire. While there weren’t any other public library makerspaces nearby, we were able to visit those affiliated with a local college as well as stand-alone organizations and tap into the wisdom of local “gurus.” Before the library even opened the doors to Idea Box; back when the room was still an underused meeting room; a local community college opened the doors of its Fab Lab to future Idea Box staff members. They invited us to come see the space and to receive a tour explaining the layout and the various pieces of equipment. We also had the opportunity to receive hands-on training on 3D printing and laser cutter operation at a local STEM professional development facility. And of course, a librarian is nothing if not curious: all of us continued to pursue training opportunities and online tutorials through resources such as Lynda.com, and continue to build our knowledge base through hands-on experiences with every shift worked in the space. A number of Idea Box staff even come into the space during its closed hours in order to get in practice time.

Our team consisted of ten brave library employees as well as the two team leads, all eager to get started making and uncertain of the perfect pathway to doing so. Team member Aubrey H. says that she has always considered herself to be a Maker. “Whether it's baking, carving, painting, anything really; I'm just happy as long as I'm making something. I knew this was something I wanted to be a part of.”

Marie H., another team member shares, “I personally felt that same compulsion, and knew that I wanted to share that with library patrons. There’s nothing like the sense of accomplishment after creating something yourself. However, most of my making experience in my outside-of-work life involved more traditional crafts, such as crocheting, lace-making, and baking. I will fully admit to trepidation and nervousness at the thought of becoming proficient with a 3D printer or laser cutter! Luckily, we had great community partners that we were able to call on for training and advice.”

It’s hard to believe, but in just a few months’ time, most of us have become confident with the space, the equipment, and the software. Our enthusiasm has only continued to grow, as we continue to make things ourselves and as we help library patrons become makers. Team member Kim A. says, “The chance to see and use a 3D printer is a big draw, but what is even more fascinating is to hear how patrons visualize using it in their personal life either to further their technological education or to spur on a business notion. Being a part of the Idea Box staff allows me to step out of my daily role as a manager and get back to “playing.” The hours in the space do not even feel like work! I can’t believe I get paid to have fun!”

It’s important to keep in mind that no one piece of equipment defines a Makerspace which means there’s plenty of room for staff to bring a variety of skills to the table, and develop their interests in everything from sewing to making food. How you define your Makerspace, and your path to becoming a Maker, is up to you!