Kitchens and Townsend win 2018 Baker & Taylor Collection Development Grant

CHICAGO — The Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA), a division of the American Library Association (ALA) has selected Savannah Kitchens, Director at the Chilton/Clanton (Alabama) Public Library and Sarah Townsend, Assistant Director of Libraries at the Suffolk (Virginia) Public Library, as the recipients of its 2018 Baker & Taylor Collection Development Grant.

Kitchens and Townsend will each receive a grant of $1,000, generously provided by Baker & Taylor, for collection development.

“As we’ve embedded ourselves in our rapidly growing community, focusing on outreach to people of all ages including teens, we’ve been inspired by the diversity found in Suffolk,” said Townsend. “This generous grant will be an important part of our goal of updating and diversifying our collection so that our teens see themselves in the books on our shelves, no matter where they come from, who they are and what dreams they might have.”

"The staff of the Chilton/Clanton Public Library are thrilled and honored to be a recipient of the YALSA 2018 Collection Development Grant," said Kitchens. "This grant will help us create a young adult collection from the ground up, and allow us to provide the kind of library service this often-overlooked population within our community deserves."

More information about the Baker and Taylor/YALSA Collection Development Grant, including the application for the next round of the grant, is available on the YALSA Awards and Grants page. Applications must be submitted online by Dec. 1, 2018.

The Baker & Taylor Collection Development Grant Jury members are: Chair Melissa West, Kennebunk (Maine) Free Library; Evelina Armstrong, Bellwood (Illinois) Public Library; Amanda Lindsay, DeKalb County Public Library, Lithonia, GA; Alexandra Patterson, Mercersburg (Pennsylvania) Academy; and Andrea Vernola, Kalamazoo (Michigan) Public Library.

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.