YA Round-Up: Teen Services Interviews Edition

After over 6 months of BPL RA being official in charge of the library's teen services, we are beginning our interviews for 2 part time positions.  These new paraprofessionals will staff the desk and do teen programming.  Teen collection development will stay with those of us who are already doing it, but freeing the RA staff up from having to staff 2 desks with the same number of people should be a win-win all around.

But it does mean that I will be assisting our fearless leader Kathy with interviews all day today (as well as a few more days next week).  In order to get myself in the right frame of mind, I thought it was time for another Round-Up of YA links.

• Do you sometimes wish more teens would talk to you at the desk? I like to get a wider sampling of teen opinions by consulting the Teenreads.com rotating Teen Board.  Click here to see the brand new bunch.  They are broken up by grade level from 8th to college. Over the next 6 months they will be contributing to the site in many different ways. In fact one of their first posts caught my eye.  Entitled, Problems of a Teenage Bookworm, the post reminded me of my past AND present. It reminded me that while I often feel so much older than my teen patrons, in reality we are both interested in finding them a good book to read. You can access all the Teen Board Blog posts from this Board and previous Boards here.
• Kelly on Stacked also found a way to find out what her teens are actually reading this summer.  Click through to see her lengthy, detailed, and useful report on her summer reading program.
• One of my favorite new (to me) teen blogs is Reading Rants! Out of the Ordinary Teen Booklists! by a NYC middle school librarian.  Click here for her blogging mission statement in detail but I really like how she lays out what teens can get from her blog and what adults can get. She is also clear about what the blog is NOT. Also, she has been doing this since 2002, so there are a lot of reviews, lists, and author info to choose from here.
• The Green Bean Teen Queen is a Youth Librarian who started her blog for similar reasons as I did.  Although she serves children from birth-18, she focuses her blog on Teens and Tweens.  Not only is this a well done blog, but I like how it includes tweens [a group we are struggling to serve better at the BPL].
• Epic Reads is holding a multi-generational conversation where people can suggest their favorite teen books for adults and favorite adult books for teens.  Click here to lurk or participate.
• On The Hub: Why YA Books are Awesome.
• Finally, all day today SLJ is running a free online event: Summer Teen 2013.

Off to begin the search for the newest members of the BPL RA Dream Team!