Fall 2007 - YALSA - American Library Association

Remembering YALSA
Madden of the King County (Wash.)
Library System dropped to one knee after
I introduced her to Dorothy, and kissed
her hand as a longtime admirer of her
work. It was a great moment.
My Variable Buttons
The Palmer House elevators were so
crowded during a Midwinter Meeting that
once when I got on and turned around, the
friction of rubbing against somebody while
turning opened every button on the front
of my blouse! Standing in the front of the
crowded elevator as it stopped on every
floor, I unwittingly flashed every floor until
we reached the lobby. It was only then that
I happened to look down. Would that I
had known about Victoria’s Secret underwear;
instead, only a plain cotton bra did
the flashing!
The “Palmer
House Crud”
I used to say that half of ALA’s active
members came to the Palmer House with
the “crud” (a.k.a. the flu), and the other
half left with it. I remember planning to
spend some time with Evelyn Shaevel’s
family in Chicago after the conference
(Evelyn is one of Beth Yoke’s predescessors).
What should have been a very pleasant
time, instead saw me prostrate with the
“crud” on her mother’s sofa. I was roused
only to have dinner before being delivered
back to a prone position. I did interact
with Evelyn’s family enough to realize that
much of her political sense came from
family discussions of temple politics, and I
learned to love chopped liver. Luckily, the
only other time I was sick during a conference
was in Dallas, where I could only eat
French bread and drink water in a fivestar
hotel.
What I Learned
Besides all the silly anecdotes, what I
mainly learned from YALSA was that I
was not alone either in implementing or
caring about library services for adolescents,
and that there are many different
ways to do both. I also learned how to
organize large-audience programs while
coping with an unreasonably long planning
time, a frequently maddening bureaucracy,
and unresponsive committee members.
Thanks to very good advice from
Lillian Gerhardt, former editor of School
Library Journal, I learned how to make
people feel good about serving on committees
or boards I chaired, especially
when they often paid their own way, used
vacation time, and stayed three or four to
a room in order to participate in YALSA.
I responded quickly to communications;
thanked people in writing; welcomed them
upon appointment; arranged for a communal
meal if they were interested; made
sure they knew when we were meeting
in time for them to book cheaper plane
reservations; gave everybody agendas; and
kept to our schedule. I also learned to
keep the YALSA office informed of everything
I did, realizing early that, despite
any personality problems or philosophical
disagreements I may have had with them,
the office staff never needed to be taken
by surprise because of something I never
told them. I sent all files to my successor in
any endeavor. These things sound simple,
or possibly simple-minded, but they were
absolutely necessary to my political and
organizational development. It is still
amazing to me how often they are ignored
in professional associations.
I also learned through watching the
struggle over allocated page space in Top
of the News, which the YASD and the
Children’s Services Division (CSD) both
shared, that there was a great need for a
dedicated and professional voice in young
adult library services, which is basically
how VOYA was conceived. I like to think
that this has helped foster YALSA’s current
strength, which I now enjoy participating
in online as much as I once did in
person. YALS
34 YALS | Young Adult Library Services | Fall 2007