Thursday, October 27, 2011

Getting Involved With YALSA

In my years as a librarian, one thing that has really helped me gain experience, community and reinvigorated me is my involvement in YALSA.  As you probably know, YALSA is the Young Adult Library Services Association.  Through YALSA I have participated in exciting committees, met awesome authors, and traveled to cool places for conferences.  More importantly it has helped me become an articulate and confident speaker, and given me ample opportunities to give back to the profession I love.

If you are interested in finding out how to get involved with YALSA, they have a website show you how to get involved, including a free webinar you can check out.

If you have any questions about YALSA involvement, and how to get started, please feel free to let me know!  I've been on Popular Paperbacks, the Margaret A. Edwards Award committee, Great Graphic Novels, and the YALSA Board.  Currently I'm serving on the Nomination Committee.  Even if you aren't ready to go to conferences, there are many virtual ways to get involved!

Wednesday, October 12, 2011

Should Libraries Offer Programs on Hacking?

School Library Journal has an interesting article posted this week about organized educational efforts, including conference workshops, to introduce kids to hacking:

License to Hack: Kids are getting into hacking in a whole new way. And that’s a good thing.

Workshops covered picking locks—the school locker variety—Google hacking, and coding in Scratch, a programming language for children. In a session entitled “Meet the Feds,” kids were invited to press the flesh with agents from the Department of Homeland Security and the National Security Agency and chat with them about “intelligence gathering, cyber weapons, war strategy, and more.”

It’s an interesting convergence, with the global exploits of hardcore hacker groups Anonymous and Lulzsec in the background, but hacking—in various forms—is another way in which kids are engaging technology and one that’s evolving.


What do you think? Is this the sort of thing libraries should be dipping our toes in? Is this how we get teens truly interested in new technologies, or is this getting into ethically dodgy ground?

Tuesday, October 4, 2011

Teen Slang - Know It (But Maybe Avoid Trying to Use It)

Teen.com has a great list of slang taken from MTV's new show Awkward:

Should You Offish Add These New Abbrevs & Slang Words to Your Vocab?

How many of them have you heard used by real live teens? What new slang have you heard recently your peers might want to know about?

I would seriously hesitate before deliberately incorporating any of these in conversations with teens if you are trying to look cool...because that stuff always backfires! But knowing what they are saying is a good advantage to have, both so you can be understanding, and have a bit more of a clue as to what really is going on around you ;)

Other teen slang sources: