Work-Related Things

For most of my career, I've been a Young Adult Specialist.  In public libraries, "Young Adult" generally refers to the 12-18 age bracket. So in other words... I was paid to keep up with the latest trends and interests of teenagers and try to make the library fit in their lives. 

For nine years I was the Young Adult Specialist for the Suffolk Cooperative Library System, in Bellport, NY.  Wanna know more about what I did there?  Check this out...YALSA did a member Spotlight on me!  Yippie!

Starting in 2006 I became the Manager of Young Adult Services for the Oakland Public Library, in Oakland, CA.

Now here I am in June 2008 & I've just accepted a job with the San José Public Library.  In this job, I'm going to run one of their 19 branches.

In the Fall 2003 Semester I tried my hand at teaching - I taught one of the "core courses" for most of the local MLS programs... the dreaded Fundamentals of Library Science.  It's dreaded because the only thing more boring than the textbook is the way most instructors teach it.  My goal was to make the class as interesting as possible & point out when/where some of this dry dry dry historical information might come in handy (aside from playing Jeopardy) in the real world.  It was fun but since it was a class I had slept through when I was forced to take it, it was hard to really have fun with it.  I was teaching it all to myself before being able to teach it to them... 

In the Fall of 2004 & 2005 I had the chance to have some serious fun - teaching Planning & Delivering YA Services in the Public Library.  I've missed teaching in CA but I am enjoying the extra free time!

In June 2004 I was invited to join the Editorial Board for VOYA - as far as I'm concerned, this is beyond amazing because VOYA is the end-all-be-all journal for librarians who work with teens.

These are some of the sites I've been involved with...

• The Virtual YA Index - an index of public library web pages for teens
• The YA Librarian's Help Homepage - a site for the librarians and other library staff who work with teens
• Teens' Top Ten - YALSA's YA Galley Committee's project to get teens to vote for the best books published for their age group each year.  There are select groups of teen reviewers who are able to nominate the titles & the vote is open to the public during Teen Read Week (mid-October).

(update 6/23/2002) Hey - how cool is this?!?  Today *I* was quoted in the New York Times!  In the article, "Tempting Students Away from Screens" by Joy Alter Hubel... section 14 (Long Island) page 11.  =:-)  And now if I search for myself in the NY Times database I get a hit... Mom woulda just loved this!

Funny thing... the article talks about the schools trying to include more "contemporary" books in their required reading lists... I'm quoted saying how few schools use contemporary YA Lit and all the examples showing how progressive some schools are... the examples are all *adult* novels... not a-one of them is a YA title.

Blatant Plug Below

I also have added speaking engagements to my repertoire and am available for conferences and workshops.  I have conducted workshops on such topics as the Suffolk County Battle of the Books, YA101, Creating & Maintaining Library Web Pages for Teens and YA Collection Development.  Lately, a lot of my presentations have been general staff workshops on the subject of working with teen patrons when the YA Librarian is not around.

If you or your organization is interested in one of these (or *any* other YA related subjects - though known as a geek, I am a YA Specialist who works with all aspects of YA service in many different types of public libraries), please contact me by e-mail, tracey@rebellibrarian.com - I'd love to come visit!

If you like what you see... and even if you don't...e-mail me!

This page received some attention on 06/22/08 at about 08:41 PM