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

Monica Owens

Logo committee

Spring Lea Henry

Anna Zillinger

Gwen Proctor

Front Page committee

Erika Segraves

Anna Zillinger