Minutes of the CYAAL meeting on 10-23-07 at Smoky Hill Library
Jan asked for suggestions for what CYAAL should accomplish over the next 7 years. The top three as voted on by the group were:
Programming, which encompassed:Out of school programs for teens
Programs for boys
Teen book clubs and writing groups
Life skills programs – partnering with Workforce suggested
Teen writing skills for the real world, for instance query letter writing, online communication skills. Spring Lea offered to help with this, writing guilds, journal-making
Share specifics of successful programs via the wiki or some other method
Promotion/advocacy:
We need to promote ourselves and get ourselves out there
Administrators will pay attention if we can get articles or a column in Colorado Libraries and other newsletters, newspapers or journals, written by teen services librarians
We should also step up our advocacy to be real leaders so we will be consulted by administrators
Need promotion ideas for teens, those who use and do not use the library
Produce a document and provide research that advocates for youth with library administrators and boards
Technology:
We need to stay up-to-date on technology, for example podcasting. It was suggested that we can look at YALSA’s Teen Tech Week page for information
Other ideas and suggestions:
Discussions of teen services in the “new library model”
Sources of and ways to get funding or grants for programs, furniture, décor, ambience, etc.
Update the website
Training and discussions on collections, for example non-fiction for boys, street lit, organization/placement/arrangement of different types of literature
Outreach to small, rural libraries
How to get more collaboration between libraries and with schools, for funds for shared resources and equipment, programs and sponsors (both local and online), and how to get administrative buy-in for statewide collaboration
Information on teen depression resources, help and how to do staff training
Ways to increase youth participation
Creation of a performer database with contact information and info on what they do and how good the program is
Spa/de-stress day
Time management help
Panel of board members to tell us how to “woo” them
Sharon Morris from the State Library and the CAL Board talked about both CAL interest group members get together and talk about what they do and share ideas. There is no conflict between the teen interest group and CYAAL but there is some overlap; if we can say we are in conjunction with CAL people from smaller and rural libraries might be able to attend our meetings.
2008 Schedule
Tuesday, February 26, Louisville
Diane Tuccillo (author of Library Teen Advisory Groups) will do a 3 hour presentation on teen participation in the library
May – TBA, Parker
Spring Lea will do a presentation on advocacy
Friday-Saturday, August 8-9, Eagle
Best practices in programming – bring ideas to swap, demos and not just from Summer Reading; technology presentations
October – TBA (not during TRW), Fort Collins
Technology lab; Mary to demo the wiki
We broke into groups to go through the Think Tank Proposal. Some ideas suggested as the most important results of the group brainstorming:
Programming information sharing, probably with a page on the wiki, including cost, turnout, success, contact information for any presenters, number of people allowed to attend, and including a place for others to rate the program (like the Amazon product reviews). It should be searchable.
Small groups need to be formed to accomplish this and other tasks,
Larger libraries can “adopt” smaller libraries in order to help them out – Lib Sibs
To get the word out about what we do, we should participate in other listservs, like libnet, yalsa, etc., and mention the teen aspect of whatever is being discussed.
Branding – some sort of logo
Redo the web page
We should do a program at ALA explaining what CYAAL does so that other states can follow our example
Each of us needs to be a conduit from CYAAL to our staffs at our libraries
When we firm up our wiki, each of us needs to commit to using or adding to it on a regular basis, and then use that as our advocacy with our director
We should give true invitations to CYAAL meetings to supervisors/directors, so they can bring them to us (like it is their idea that we attend)
Put together a member contact list, maybe even with a head shot
Create member ribbons (like YALSA’s at ALA) to wear to CAL
Bring your own toy day next time
Add funny stuff to the wiki
Why do we like CYAAL?
We get validation from CYAAL, support, knowledge that the others are behind us even if our director is not
It is free
The quality of the librarians involved is A-1
Sharing
The meetings are always fun and wacky; stress relief; they create energy
Committees to do some of the above:
Programming directory
Erika Segraves – lead
Crystal Niedzwiadek
Kriska Daltonhurst
Logo committee
Spring Lea Henry
Anna Zillinger
Gwen Proctor
Front Page committee
Erika Segraves
Anna Zillinger
Comments (0)
You don't have permission to comment on this page.