Dodds, Page, Gilmartin receive YALSA’s 2017 Conference Scholarship Grants

CHICAGO — The Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA), a division of the American Library Association (ALA), awarded the 2017 Baker & Taylor/YALSA Conference Grants to Maeve Dodds and Jean Page and The Dorothy Broderick Student Scholarship to Sean Gilmartin. Each will receive up to $1,000 to attend the 2017 ALA Annual Conference in Chicago this summer.

Maeve Dodds serves as Lead Librarian for Teens at the Charlotte (North Carolina) Mecklenburg Library. Since 2012, she has been collaborating with other libraries, schools, and departments within her library to provide the best possible service for teens. Dodds’ professional goal for the year is to become more involved in ALA and YALSA, and to connect with others in order to “come up with new ideas for my department, and to see what more I can do for my library system on a national level.”

Jean Page has been the librarian at Fullerton (California) Union High School, since 2013. Additionally, she works as an on-call librarian at the Mission Viejo Public Library. Page calls herself a “lifelong learner” who has always wanted to attend an ALA conference. She hopes to “learn more about makerspaces, 3D printing, technology trends, and young adult services.”

Sean Gilmartin is a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. He is also gaining library experience as a teen services associate at the Elmwood (Illinois) Park Public Library. “I want to provide the best programs that push my teens to challenge themselves in 21^st century learning,” Gilmartin says. “Collaborating with other librarians on creating programs and guiding interest-based learning is a priority for me.”

The Baker & Taylor Conference Grant is awarded to first-time attendees of an Annual Conference. Recipients must be YALSA members and have between one and ten years’ experience working with teenagers. The Dorothy Broderick Student Scholarship is funded by YALSA's Leadership Endowment and is given to a graduate student attending the conference for the first time.

Applications for the 2018 Baker and Taylor grant and Dorothy Broderick Student Scholarship can be found on the Awards and Grants for Members page of the YALSA web site. Apply by December 1, 2017.

The YALSA Conference Travel Scholarships Jury members are: Chair Sarah Flowers, Morgan Hill, CA; Red Coffey, Queens Borough Public Library, Flushing, NY; Shannon Peterson, Kitsap Regional Library, Bremerton, WA; Virginia Sharp March, Onslow County Public Library, Jacksonville, NC; Robin Sofge, Prince William Public Library System, Dumfries, VA.

The mission of the Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA) is to support library staff in alleviating the challenges teens face, and in putting all teens ‒ especially those with the greatest needs ‒ on the path to successful and fulfilling lives. For more information about YALSA or to access national guidelines and other resources go to www.ala.org/yalsa, or contact the YALSA office by phone, 800-545-2433, ext. 4390; or e-mail: yalsa@ala.org.