YA Galley Library Advisor Job Description

Requirements

  1. Advisors must be current members of YALSA.
  2. Advisors must have 5 or more active young adult participants in a teen library book group for which reading promotion among peers is a primary focus.
  3. Advisors must read widely and be aware of current trends and issues in YA book publishing.
  4. Advisors will commit to seeing the project through to completion.
  5. Advisors must have good planning and organizing skills.
  6. Advisors must be able to motivate teens to read and to try new and different kinds of books, to evaluate books critically, and to provide useful feedback to publishers.
  7. Advisors must be skilled in guiding teens as they follow a demanding calendar with deadlines. (See
    Timeline for Teens’ Top Ten Group Advisors.) Their teen groups must have at least 2 years experience.

Duties

  1. To oversee, support, and encourage young adult participants in the YA Galley project.
  2. To participate actively in the YA Galley listserv, monitoring all postings and sharing ideas and expressing opinions as needed.
  3. To maintain contact and provide feedback to the YA Galley Committee when necessary.
  4. To plan projects with teen members that utilize YA Galley books, from teen input into library book selection to topical discussions, booktalk presentations and other peer book promotion, summer reading programs, outreach to special teen audiences, and other activities.
  5. To request an adequate number of books offered by publishers to assure that teen group members have enough copies for their project requirements (up to 5 copies per title).
  6. To keep track of participating book publishers and contact information for each.
  7. To keep track of the books that publishers send and what teens are reading. (
    Hint: It really helps to record titles on index cards in an alphabetical file with notes about which person is reading what book when, along with their reactions.)
  8. To assure that teens know how to critically evaluate the books they read and how to effectively complete the required evaluation form.
  9. To encourage teens to complete evaluation forms online (or arrange for handwritten forms to be entered and submitted online) and receive/review the raw forms.
  10. To forward copies of completed evaluation forms to the individual publishers. (NOTE: Publishers participate in YA Galley to gain feedback on teen opinions of their books, which teen groups have an obligation to provide in a timely manner.)
  11. To assure teen groups have read or seriously attempted at least ten of the nominated titles before casting votes (required for voting status).
  12. To conduct final book evaluation meetings and to take a final vote on Teens' Top Ten titles by the end of September, according to instructions from the TTT Contact.
  13. To submit the TTT group's final ballot to the TTT Contact on the required forms and by the established deadline.
  14. To follow the Timeline for TTT Group Advisors stringently, planning teen meetings so that nominations and voting deadlines may be met.
  15. To forward copies of TTT nomination forms to the designated TTT Contact on the YAGalley committee