The YA Librarians' Manifesto

The YA Librarians’ Manifesto

We, the young adult librarians of Queens Library, state the following:

We believe that
• teens are beings of unlimited potential;
• teens are the keystone in a bridge of continuous library services at all stages of life; teens are our former child and our future adult customers, a vital link that must not be lost or broken;
• continual conversation with and input from our teens is essential to creating and maintaining relevant and flourishing library services for them;
• the programs and services we offer provide creative, educational, and experiential opportunities for teens unavailable elsewhere;
• teens should have separate spaces in our libraries, with dynamic materials collections that meet the wide range of their needs;
• high-quality library materials and programs for teens will keep them using the library into adulthood and that budgets for these services should reflect this.

We are
• experts on literature and information resources for teens;
• caring, supportive adults in our teens’ lives;
• resources for free information to help teens make the most of their lives;
• passionate advocates for our teens and for our libraries.

draft: September 30, 2008.
final version: October 16, 2008

Blog Action Day 2008

Today is Blog Action Day!

What does that mean? Here's the information from the website:

"Blog Action Day is an annual nonprofit event that aims to unite the world’s bloggers, podcasters and videocasters, to post about the same issue on the same day. Our aim is to raise awareness and trigger a global discussion."

This year's (REALLY RELEVANT) theme is POVERTY. As urban public librarians poverty is something we see everyday, often without even realizing it. In my guise as Super Librarian (saving the world one library card at a time) I often wonder if we couldn't do more to fight poverty, but we do many things already, and pretty well, if you ask me, including

--free access to books, magazines, newspapers, DVDs, CDs--pretty much all of the world's accumulated knowledge!
--free internet and computer access (and printing!)
--free recreational, cultural, informational programs
--a warm in the winter, cool in the summer safe place for people of all ages to spend time and be part of a community

Poverty IS a library issue. Here are some places to learn more:

ALA Office for Literacy and Outreach Services

ALA's Social Responsibilities Round Table

NYLA's Social Responsibilities Round Table

Kathleen de la Peña McCook's (my librarian hero!)Blog A Librarian at the Kitchen Table

So what do YOU ALL think?

The Sermon

I usually describe my techy skills as being "just enough to get me into trouble" and this seems to be the case with getting the Sermon to play directly from this blog. So since I do know when enough is enough, here is a link which will (should) play the MP3 of the soon-to-be-infamous YA Services Sermon. http://www.archive.org/details/VikkisYaServicesSermon