YALSA Midwinter Paper Presentation

The YALSA Midwinter Paper Presentation is an annual event sponsored by past presidents of YALSA.  Its purpose is to provide a venue for educators, librarians, students, and others interested in young adult librarianship to gather and explore a topic of current interest that impacts the field. The YALSA Midwinter Paper Committee will select one paper to be  delivered at the 2013 ALA Midwinter Meeting in Seattle, WA, January 25-29, 2013.  The presenter will receive up to $1,500 to defray travel and registration costs.  The paper will be published in YALSA’s peer-reviewed Journal of Research on Libraries and Young Adults after the conference. For more information about the journal, visit http://yalsa.ala.org/jrlya.

The YALSA Midwinter Paper Presentation Committee is now seeking proposals for papers presenting points of view based on current research and relating to topics covered in YALSA’s Research Agenda.  The agenda includes four priority
areas:

Priority Area 1: Impact of Libraries on Young Adults
Priority Area 2: Young Adult Reading and Resources
Priority Area 3: Information Seeking Behaviors and Needs of Young Adults
Priority Area 4: Informal and Formal Learning Environments and Young Adults

The full research agenda can be found at:
http://www.ala.org/yalsa/guidelines/research/researchagenda.

The application form is located at:
http://www.ala.org/yalsa/awardsandgrants/mwpaper.  Important details include:

* Paper proposals are due no later than June 1, 2012.
* Only previously unpublished papers will be accepted.
* Proposals must be emailed as an MS Word document attachment. The attachment must be saved with the file name of <lastname_pastpresidentlecture.doc>.  For example, smith_pastpresidentlecture.doc.
* All submissions must be emailed to yalsa@ala.org, with the subject line “Past President Lecture.”
* The winner will be selected and all applicants will be notified by August 31, 2012.
* All paper presenters must register for the Midwinter Meeting by December 1, 2012.
* For questions, email Dr. Denise E. Agosto, Midwinter Paper Presentation Committee chair, at dea22@drexel.edu.

Any individual from within or without of the library community is welcome to submit an application. Membership in ALA/YALSA is not required.

CFP: Growing Up Asian American in Children’s Literature

I found this on Tarie’s blog, Asian in the Heart, World on the Mind.

Growing Up Asian American in Children’s Literature, Proposed Edited Collection

“Growing Up Asian American in Children’s Literature” seeks to explore some of the major issues Asian American children and adolescents face growing up in the United States in the latter half of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first century. Part of the mission of the collection is to define the term Asian American inclusively, to include all the “Asian” ethnicities from the Asian continent, the Pacific Rim, and also from around the world. Some questions the collection will discuss are what does it mean to be Asian and American? Is there a loss of identity in assimilation? How are Asian American children’s experiences different from other minority groups? Are different regions of the country factors in how they grow up? How do they construct themselves racially and culturally?

The collection will be interdisciplinary and may include non-traditional texts, such as picture books, comic books, TV shows or movies, toys, and traditional adolescent classics such as John Okada’s No-No Boy (1957) and Laurence Yep’s Dragonwings (1975), graphic novels, such as Gene Luen Yang’s American Born Chinese(2006), and recently published novels, such as Thanhha Lai’s 2012 Newbery Honor Book Inside Out and Back Again (2011), and N. H. Senzai’s Shooting Kabul (2010).

Possible article topics may include, but are not limited to:

* What it means to be Asian and American
* Identity and assimilation: white on the inside and yellow/brown on the outside
* Race/racism/exoticized and marginalized
* Immigrant (FOB) vs. the second/third generation (ABC or Desi)
* Bi-racialism, ethnicity, and hybridity
* Diaspora, home and homeland, transnationalism
* Globalization, citizenship, and mobility
* Family separations (war-torn homeland/refugees)
* Education and stereotypes of the model minority
* 9/11
* Religion in a Christian country: Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, etc.
* Poverty/illegal immigration
* Bilingualism, translation, and the child interpreter
* Alien/foreigner but never “American”
* Gender, sexuality, homosexuality

A major university press has indicated a strong interest in the project. Please submit a detailed 500-1000 word abstract and a brief CV by May 15, 2012 to Ymitri Mathison at yjmathison@pvamu.edu. Completed articles of 6000-7500 words must be submitted by November 1, 2012, following MLA formatting guidelines. I hope to turn in the collection to the publisher in early 2013 for a possible publication date in late 2013. Inquiries welcome and all emails will be acknowledged.

Virginia Hamilton Grant

Virginia Hamilton and Arnold Adoff

Creative Outreach Grant

For Teachers and Librarians

The 7^th Annual Virginia Hamilton and Arnold Adoff Creative Outreach Grants for Teachers and Librarians call for proposals is on its way.  Two grants up to $1,000 each will be given. One grant will be given to a teacher and another to a librarian for proposals to develop new classroom or library programs that raise awareness of multicultural literature among young people, particularly but not exclusively, through the works of Virginia Hamilton. The application deadline is February 28, 2012.  For complete instructions and proposal guidelines, see the application available on the conference Web site: http://virginiahamilton.slis.kent.edu/awards.html.

Please complete and submit the application form along with your proposal. Librarians and teachers should send their application form and proposal to Dr. Meghan Harper (sharper1@kent.edu), Virginia Hamilton and Arnold Adoff Creative Outreach Grant, School of Library and Information Science, P.O. Box 5190, 314 Library, Kent State University, Kent, Ohio 44242.  Grant recipients will be announced at the Virginia Hamilton Conference on Multicultural Literature for Youth on Friday, April 13, 2012, at the Kent State Student Center.

The 28th Annual Virginia Hamilton Conference on Multicultural Literature for Youth is scheduled for April 12 and 13, 2012, at the Kent State University Student Center. The conference provides a forum for discussion of multicultural themes and issues in literature for children and young adults. “Celebrating Diversity: Sharing Our Stories” is the theme for this year’s conference, which will feature the remarkable Alma Flor Ada, the talented Lisa Yee and the amazing illustrator E.B. Lewis.

International Online Librarian Courses

The Association for Library Collections & Technical Services (ALCTS) is now accepting grant applications for the February-September 2012 sessions of the association’s four-week fundamentals online courses. One free seat per online continuing educational course session is available to librarians and information professionals from developing countries.

For background information about the grant, including criteria for applying, please see: http://www.ala.org/ala/mgrps/divs/alcts/awards/grants/onlinegrant.cfm

Fundamentals of Acquisitions
Session 1: February 27 – March 23

Session 2: April 7 – May 11

Session 3: July 30 – August 24

The Fundamentals of Acquisitions (FOA) web course focuses on the basics of acquiring monographs and serials:  goals and methods, financial management of library collections budgets, and relationships among acquisitions librarians, library booksellers, subscription agents, and publishers.  In this course, you will receive a broad overview of the operations involved in acquiring materials after the selection decision is made.  Note that in FOA, we distinguish between collection development, which involves the selection of materials for the library; and acquisitions, which orders, receives, and pays for those materials.

Fundamentals of Electronic Resources Acquisitions
Session 1: March 5 – March 30
Session 2: April 23 – May 18

Session 3: July 23 – August 17

The Fundamentals of Electronic Resources Acquisitions (FERA) Web course will provide an overview of acquiring, providing access to, administering, supporting, and monitoring access to electronic resources.  It will provide a basic background in electronic resource acquisitions including product trials, licensing, purchasing methods, and pricing models and will provide an overview of the sometimes complex relationships between vendors, publishers, platform providers, and libraries.

This course is sponsored by Harrassowitz.

Fundamentals of Collection Development and Management
Session 1: March 19 – April 13

Session 2: May 7 – June 1

Session 3: August 20 – September 14

The Fundamentals of Collection Development and Management addresses the basic components of these important areas of responsibility in libraries. Components include complete definition of collection development and collection management; collections policies and budgets as part of library planning; collection development (selecting for and building collections); collection management (e.g., making decisions after materials are selected, including decisions about withdrawal, transfer, preservation); collection analysis—why and how to do it; outreach, liaison, and marketing; and some suggestions about the future for collection development and management.

This course is sponsored by Coutts-Ingram.

Fundamentals of Preservation
Session 1: March 26 – April 20
Session 2: May 21 – June 15

The Fundamentals of Preservation introduces participants to the principles, policies and practices of preservation in libraries and archives.  The course is designed to inform all staff, across divisions and departments and at all levels of responsibility. It provides tools to begin extending the useful life of library collections.  Components include preservation as a formal library function and how it reflects and supports the institutional mission; the primary role of preventive care, including good storage conditions, emergency planning and careful handling of collections; the history and manufacture of physical formats and how this impacts preservation options; standard methods of care and repair, as well as reformatting options; and challenges in preserving digital content and what the implications are for the future of scholarship.

To apply, go to: https://alctsprogram.wufoo.com/forms/alcts-online-course-grant-application-form/