YART Spring Meeting Review

Patty Birch of North Platte High School gave a great presentation on collection development. Saying that teens are like jellyfish, Patty told us young adults may act like they don’t know what’s going on but they are always learning and listening and our role as librarians is to help guide them in what they read.

Patty talked about making sure your selection criteria is in place as well as keeping up with series. She also talked about making sure you have a policy for donations/gifts to your library - making it clear that you welcome donations but will only use what you can. Patty also talked about collaborating with teachers about topics or reading requirements they will assign to their students throughout the year.

She then gave us a list of Top 10 blogs she follows for book reviews and collection development ideas. These and other resources can be found at delicious.com/nlayart. Patty's presentation led the way for some excellent discussion among those in attendance.

Then, Melanie Feyerherm Schultz, YART secretary, discussed the BWI/YALSA Collection Development Grant she received for Baright Public Library (Ralston, NE) in 2011. She talked about how she wrote the grant, detailing what she said she would do with the resources, how she involved the middle and high school book clubs in the selection of books and how successful it was to expand the library's YA collection.
 
Other grants and funding opportunities were discussed which can also be found on YART's Delicious page through the "collection development grant" tag.  A suggestion was to note on a calendar all the different deadlines for grants that pertain to your school or public library to make sure you're aware of when you should be working on them.

Scholastic book fairs at the middle and high school levels were another possibility for funding.
Jake Rundle, YART chair, also discussed Junior Library Guild books that you can subscribe to. This resource will send you a book each month for each reading level you subscribe to.

Then Sally Snyder, of the Nebraska Library Commission presented book talks of “Best Genre Books to Build Your Collection.” The handout of books she discussed is available by clicking here. and the audio of the presentation is now available here. There are some fantastic suggestions in there so be sure to take a look and listen. 

Thanks again to all of our presenters and our attendees. We hope you enjoyed the Spring Meeting!