Thanks to everyone who attended our YALS Fall Conference. If you could take a moment to please take this brief survey to help us plan next years conference, it would be greatly appreciated. Your feedback is very important to us!

Click here.

Best,
The YALS Board

On Thursday, September 28, YALS held their annual Conference at the Local Government Center in Concord. A brief business meeting was held, the August meeting minutes were accepted as amended and new Officers were voted in.  Ann Hoey, our amazing Children’s and Youth Consultant at the New Hampshire State Library was honored with flowers and gifts in recognition of her upcoming retirement.

We will miss you greatly, Ann!

A Mental Health discussion was led by Rebecca DeHass, Psychologist at Change Direction NH. Tanya Ricker (Flume chair), Julia Lanter and Katherine Bollenbach (Isinglass Chair) updated us on the changes with our teen book awards. The Featured Speaker, Lisa Bunker, author of Felix YZ, spoke about her new book and how to make libraries a safer place for LGBTQ teens. A Safe Spaces panel – Lisa House (Rye Public Library) and Heather Ouellette-Cygan (GLSEN – NH Chapter) continued the conversation of how libraries can be safe spaces for teens. Staff members of the Portsmouth Public Library, Laura Horwood-Benton, Mollie Mulligan and Andrew Greenlaw-Houldsworth, shared how they currently use Social Media and how we can effectively reach teens with social media.

Conference Handouts – click here.

Quite a full day and definitely one of the best conferences we have ever held. If you missed this one, I hope you will consider joining us next year. Also, please consider coming to a YALS meeting. The next one is Thursday, November 9 at the local Government Center in Concord. Networking at 9:30 am, meeting begins at 10 am.

From Katherine Bollenbach, the Isinglass Chair:

I’ve gotten some displays for the Flume/Isinglass awards up in both my libraries (Belmont and Salisbury) and am sending pictures along in hopes of inspiring more displays! They’re simple but they’re working. I’m also attaching the simple poster I used – in Word format, so it’s editable if you’re only working with one of the awards. If you have a display, please send me pictures!

We also need more nominations – there’s only 4 up on the wiki at the moment, and I’ve already read 3 of them. As a reminder the criteria are:

Titles must be nominated by teens in grades 7-12, can be fiction or nonfiction books, with appeal to this age group. They must have a publication date within the last two years (no older than 2016). If the book is part of a series, it must be able to stand alone, meaning a reader doesn’t have to read the other books in the series to understand what’s going on. Forms and brochures available on the Flume and Isinglass websites: http://yals.nhlibrarians.org/book-awards/flume/ and http://www.barringtonlibrary.com/isinglass.asp. Flume brochures are here: http://yals.nhlibrarians.org/book-awards/flume/winners-2/

Teen Awards (.pdf)

Do you have an amazing promotion idea for the Flume/Isinglass Awards? Something that really gets the teens reading?

Click on the Programming link to share.  

Do you have something really awesome planned for your summer reading program?

Do you have a tried and true program that always brings out the teens?

PLEASE share!

Click on Programming Ideas to submit a program idea.

Teens and adults can access practice tests through this program.  You can add this free program to your library website.

http://driving-tests.org/library/

They are currently running an incentive award program for new library partners: five of them will each  receive $500. Have you tried this program? If not, this may be a good time to check them out: http://driving-tests.org/library-award/ (The incentive award program ends 31 August 2017.)

Here is another site to add for your patrons.

DMV Permit tests

A college professor has created a resource that would be very helpful for teenagers who visit the library, or a library website. It’s focused specifically on helping teenagers find jobs and it’s 100% free to use. It has very useful information including work permit information, labor laws, jobs for teens by city/state, non-traditional job ideas, and more.

You can find it here: JobsForTeensHQ.

On April 19 at 3:30 pm, the Flume/Isinglass committee will meet at the Hooksett Public Library.  The committee will be choosing the nominees for the 2018 lists.  Anyone interested in taking part is welcome to attend.  The committee would love to have more people involved.  If you are unable to attend, you can still help by sharing your thoughts of the current nominations on the Flume wiki.

We are collecting nominations for the Flume and the Isinglass Awards. Please encourage teens to submit nominations of recently published fiction or nonfiction that appeals to readers in grades 7-12.

Nominations are accepted online at the Flume/Isinglass page at http://yals.nhlibrarians.org/book-awards/flume/. The award committee is planning to select the two lists this spring, which will be voted on in April 2018. The vote for the 2017 Isinglass will take place in April. No Flume Award will be given in 2017, but teens should submit nominations of their favorite new titles at any time.

Please contact Ann Hoey with your questions.