Other Things I Wrote

During my personal blogging hiatus, I was spending a lot of my free time on Amazing Audiobooks and on running The Hub, but I did make some time to write — it just wasn’t here. In case you missed any of it and are some sort of Gretchen Completionist, here are my words, elsewhere:

On The Hub

• Get Your Write On: Books Written During NaNoWriMo
• A tribute to Anne McCaffrey after she passed away; her books meant a lot to me in middle school and really shaped me as a reader
• What’s So Amazing About Those Audiobooks, Anyway?: a quick look at some of the 2012 Amazing Audiobooks Top Ten picks
• A contribution to a piece on what summer reading means to us
• Audiobooks brought to life at the Odyssey Awards presentation: a recap of the Odyssey Awards ceremony at Annual in 2012

On the YALSAblog

• 30 Days of How-To #20: How to Be an Advocate for Teens
• Serving on Amazing Audiobooks: written after my first year on the committee
• Connect, Create, Collaborate: Think Locally, Act Locally!: about collaborating with other organizations in the community — this one won an award!
• Connect, Create, Collaborate: Building Teen Services (Nearly) From Scratch (and if you find that interesting, I’m working on a longer piece now about more of what I learned in building teen services from scratch, so stay tuned)
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2 Comments March 26, 2013

YALSA blog: NaNoWriMo @ my library

We’re halfway through November (already?!), which means we’re also halfway through National Novel Writing Month. My library’s never done any NaNoWriMo programs before (we do have a memoir writing group, though), so when one of my teen patrons asked this year if we were doing anything, I decided we’d give it a try!

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?

Leave a Comment November 14, 2011

YALSA blog: Trading spaces: visiting each other’s libraries

I wrote about my visit to Chicopee Public Library when I went last month, but this month for the YALSA blog, Erin and I reflected on both of our visits and talked about the importance (especially as YA librarians) of having a professional network and of finding inspiration for new ideas.

3 Comments August 16, 2011

YALSA Blog: working with non-YA librarians

September’s drawing to a close, but there are still a few days left in the YALSA blog’s 30 Days of Back to School. My latest post is about working with non-YA librarians:

In my last post, I talked about my job search and mentioned that I had an interview the next day. I was lucky enough to be offered that job (yay!) and had my first week at work last week. The library where I’m now working has never had a dedicated YA librarian before and I’m excited about developing great teen services, but there’s only so much I can do as just one person. Many YA librarians find themselves on something of a team of one, the only professional at their libraries dedicated to serving teens. When we’re not at the desk or in the building, taking care of teens’ reference questions and readers’ advisory requests falls to non-YA staff members.

That’s right! I got a job! I’m now the Teen Services Librarian at the New Canaan Library in New Canaan, Connecticut. I think the library and I are a good match for one another, and I’m so excited to finally putting into practice everything I learned during my MLS and my work while I was a library student and all of the great ideas I’ve seen on listservs and blogs. And I’m looking forward to doing so in collaboration with my non-YA coworkers! Click through for my thoughts on the necessity of collaboration and working with librarians in adult services and children’s services.

1 Comment September 26, 2010