Burns' Great Idea Gets YALSA Fired Up

The Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA), a division of the American Library Association, has chosen Liz Burns as one of the winners for its annual Great Ideas contest. Burns, the New Jersey State Library Talking Book and Braille Center Youth Services Consultant, won for her idea to host a blog-based YALSA book award/booklist reading challenge.

The Great Ideas contest encouraged YALSA members to suggest ideas to promote the association that addressed the action areas in YALSA’s strategic plan: advocacy, continuous learning, marketing, member recruitment and engagement and research.

The YALSA Book Award/Booklist Challenge, as proposed by Burns, will encourage book bloggers to read titles from YALSA’s book awards and booklists during a specified time period. Burns’ suggestion addressed the areas of marketing, member recruitment and engagement, and advocacy. She came up with her idea during her hour-long commute to work.

“I was thinking about how YALSA has great booklists and awards and how we could get the word out about them while I was reading a few reading challenges on book blogs. During that long ride, both these things came together in my head and I thought ‘hey, this may be something YALSA is interested in,’” Burns said. “By holding a YALSA reading challenge, YALSA will promote the wonderful work it does in advancing literacy as well as the benefits of YALSA membership.”

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