The Simpsons episode that aired on Sunday dealt with YA/MG lit (with special guest star Neil Gaiman as himself). I was really impressed with how well they know the field and with the insight they had into the publishing industry. Sarah Debraski and I talked about the episode in a post on Tuesday.

Sci-fi and fantasy author Anne McCaffrey passed away on Monday; her books were among my absolute favorites in middle school and really shaped me:

I read fantasy and sci-fi almost exclusively from late elementary school through early high school, and especially in middle school, I think I read (and re-read) more of Anne McCaffrey’s books than any other author’s. Her Pern books got me so hooked on dragons that I started writing my own story about dragons. It stole liberally from other fantasy novels I was reading at the time, had absolutely no plot or character development, and rambled on and on (and on) for pages, but it consumed me for months. It’s embarrassing to read now, but I keep it as a testament to my obsession with dragons and Ms. McCaffrey, and with her ability to build worlds so real I became lost in them.

And finally, since today is Thanksgiving, a bunch of us at The Hub talked about what we’re thankful for in YA lit.

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Our NaNoWriMo support has been a collaboration between me and the adult services department and I’m happy with how things have gone so far. We have a pretty cool Municipal Liaison who’s willing to work with us, so on the first Saturday of the month, we hosted a meet-up for participants and the head of reference and I talked about library resources one might use to research a novel and resources for teen writers specifically. Exactly half of the people at the meet-in were teens, and it went well!

This Saturday we’re hosting a write-in (five hours of NaNoWriMo participants cranking out words), which is mostly just going to be us providing space. We’ve also created book displays about writing that’ll be up for the entire month. If you want to read a bit more about our NaNoWriMo support, I’ve written a post about it for the YALSAblog.

How is your library supporting NaNoWriMo this year?

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The most exciting of those things is that back at the beginning of September, one of our children’s librarians and I were on the radio! In honor of the release of the fifth movie, Jane Williams invited us to talk about Harry Potter and its effect on kids and their reading for her Bloomberg EDU program. It was really exciting and a lot of fun and I’m so glad we were given the chance to do this. (Also exciting: that same day I visited the feather store that supplies Big Bird’s plumage!) You can listen to the segment online [mp3]; our part starts at the 14-minute mark. I know this was two months ago, but I’d still love to hear what you think!

And less exciting but still worth telling you: earlier this month I wrote about my love for MT Anderson at The Hub. I’ve met him more times than any other author–from longer-than-expected conversations at conferences to seeing him speak at our local high school–and I’m so taken with his intelligence and thoughtfulness.

I also wrote about I Am Number Four and Pittacus Lore for The Hub, since the book was #4 on this year’s Teens’ Top Ten list. Mr. Lore (is that the correct way to address an alien? Can I call him Pittacus? Do I need to always use his full name?) also agreed to answer some questions for our readers.

This month is November, which means it’s NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month)! We’re going to be hosting a meet-up and a write-in at my library, so I spent part of my day at work today preparing a list of resources for teen writers. While we were preparing all of our press materials and web content for NaNoWriMo, I learned that there are a good number of published novels that started out as NaNo projects–and a good portion of them are for teens, so today for The Hub, I wrote about books written during NaNoWriMo that have teen appeal (including Water for Elephants!). Are you doing NaNoWriMo yourself or hosting WriMos at your library this year?

Do you have any of your own exciting news to share?

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I had one of those chances this month: I got to interview James Patterson over the phone. We talk about authors as rockstars, but James Patterson really is a Big Deal. Recently, his books have sold more copies than Dan Brown’s, John Grisham’s, and Stephen King’s combined.

This interview happened because as part of our 31 Days of Authors at The Hub, we’re featuring the people who brought us the titles that made this year’s Teens’ Top Ten list–and because Mr. Patterson preferred a phone call over an email exchange. I was super-nervous, but I think it went well! I wrote up the highlights of our conversation in a post for The Hub today. Click through and give it a read! I learned some interesting things about his writing process and how he sees his books especially.

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My post today is about Blythe Woolston, who wrote the Morris-Award winning The Freak Observer. I talk about how Blythe identifies as a reader and why I like that. Hop on over to The Hub to read the post, and check out the rest of our 31 Days of Authors posts throughout the month!

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Do you have any great advocacy stories or ideas?

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Photo by flickr user merwing little dear

I’m really excited for autumn, but if you’re sad to say goodbye to summer, check out the mermaid and siren books I wrote about at The Hub. I also muse a little bit about what it is about mermaids that makes them so interesting.

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by flickr user Mai Le

All of this is written from a public library (and youth services) perspective. Academic librarians, special librarians, archivists, and other library folk may see things differently.

A couple weeks ago Ashley Barrineau posted on yalsa-bk about a new website called Story Snoops, which “offers children’s book reviews from a parent’s perspective” (although in their FAQ, they clarify that they do not advocate censorship: “Our website is a resource for parents to seek out or avoid specific content in a book, and to facilitate valuable discussions with their children.”). They also offer book lists and readalikes.

I’m happy to have a new tool to use in helping young readers and their parents find books (and another tool to teach them how to find books), but I have to admit that I’m really bummed that Story Snoops wasn’t created by librarians. This is what we do–so why aren’t we doing it? (I suppose the KDL What’s Next Database comes close, but it isn’t as user-friendly as Story Snoops is.)

I’m not trying to say that non-librarians shouldn’t be allowed to talk about books, write reviews, create book lists, or suggest books to one another. And, of course, it’s not just librarians who organize information. But I do think we need to be librarians more obviously as a way of keeping libraries on people’s minds and reinforcing our image as specialists.

I want to see librarians creating user-friendly tools that help people fulfill their information needs generally (and in this case, provide readers’ advisory specifically). Tools like this (and BookLamp) not being created by librarians is fodder for the “why do we still need libraries” people–not that I think these tools actually threaten libraries, just that we need to keep ourselves in people’s mind as experts. We need to be librarians outside our libraries, and librarians to everyone, not just to our patrons. Libraries are local, but the Internet is worldwide. We need to be visible online because it provides us with an opportunity to be library advocates to nonusers.

I don’t have firsthand, lived experience with with what libraries were like before the Internet (or before computers, even), but I get the sense that we were specialists. We were the ones who understood the more-complicated-than-you’d-think principles of categorizing and classifying information. We were the ones who understood how to find difficult-to-find information. We were the ones who were experts in literature and in finding the right book for a reader.

But now there is tagging and crowdsourcing and Google and “everything” being online and other sources for finding books. And none of that is bad because it puts people in touch with the information that they want and empowers information seekers who know how to use those tools. But does it erode our claim at being specialists (and professionals)? If Google can put “everything” at your fingertips and keyword searches make finding what you’re looking for so simple and a team of dedicated, book-loving moms create a tool that helps you find your new book, what are librarians still around for?

I guess I’d argue that we’re still specialists because we have an eye for information that automated tools don’t. We are the ones who help you sort through the dross Google turns up when you search for something. We are the ones who show you how to go beyond keyword searching when you can’t find what you’re looking for. We are the ones who can say, “Yes, this is a great resource, but look, this tool recommends Because I am Furniture for tweens, and maybe that’s not the best suggestion.”

But are we doing these things in a noticeable way? We are for individual patrons when we help them, and we are when we talk to each other about these issues, but what are we doing to show non-library goers that librarians are worth having?

We need to take this specialized expertise, this domain knowledge, outside of the library. We need to harness what we know to create tools that non-library goers will use. By being specialists publicly, we prove the worth of libraries and librarians.

Why aren’t Story Snoops and BookLamp created by librarians? Do librarians lack the technical knowledge to build tools like this? Or is the intersection of “literature specialists” and “tech specialists” too small? Are we unwilling to do library-related things when we’re not on the clock at work? What’s keeping us from putting librarians and libraries in people’s faces?

We need to identify and overcome whatever hurdles there are so we can prove our worth and defend ourselves as specialists. We need to be librarians–and specialists–more obviously, more publicly.

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Exciting news: I’ve been named the new member manager of YALSA’s YA lit-focused blog, The Hub. I’m really psyched about the opportunity to help guide the The Hub as it becomes an even more awesome resource for people who love YA lit. In addition to the management aspects, I’ll also be contributing to The Hub, so I’ll be cross-posting what I write there here, too, the way I do now for the YALSAblog.

If any of you YA lit fans out there are interested in contributing to The Hub, let me know! I’d also love to hear any ideas or suggestions you have for the blog.

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