Attention librarians throughout the United States! Amy Alessio and Nick Buron need your help!

Along with Nick Buron from the Queens Borough Public Library, Amy won the Frances Henne/YALSA/VOYA Research Grant. The research will provide statistical support to reasoning that teen library services increase the circulation of teen materials and the number of teens using the library in addition to the many benefits to the teens themselves. This data should help staff advocate for teen services in libraries to administration or to the public.

So far Amy and Nick have surveyed libraries all over the country and in a few concentrated regional areas for comparison, but they need more responses, especially from the smaller states and those in the middle of the country.

Take the survey!

Amy is the Teen Coordinator at the Schaumburg (IL) Township District Library. She has been employed there for eight years and has been the Teen Coordinator for almost five years. In the past year, she went from being a full-time employee to part-time after adopting a baby. Amy has also worked as a Probation Officer Intern and as a Law Records Clerk.

Amy earned her MLS from Rosary College, now Dominican University in Illinois. She plans to enter the Professional Writing and Editing Masters program online with East Carolina University in January 2005. Along with Kim Patton, she just finished writing Teen Programming By the Calendar Year. It will be published by ALA Editions in 2005. With Kevin Scanlon, she co-authored Teen Read Week: A Manual for Participation. She also wrote the chapter "Respect for the Future: Making Space for Older Teens," published in the book Serving Older Teens, edited by Sheila B. Anderson. She has also written articles for Voice of Youth Advocates, Public Libraries, Chicago Tribune, SCBWI Bulletin, and the Teen Read Week website.

In January 2001 Amy became a YALSA Serving the Underserved (SUS) Trainer and has been conducting training sessions with adults on how to work with teens. She was asked back to the Manitowoc, WI area twice as part of a grant, and found the area so incredibly beautiful, that now she vacations there yearly. For one of those trips, she stayed at a hotel where the lake water waves literally crashed on the ground near her window. At trainings, she always brings a large stuffed Spiderman to events and hangs him from the podium or whatever as a conversation starter.

Amy served on the YALSA Board of Directors from 2001 - 2004. She has also served on the YALSA Local Arrangements, Preconference Planning Committee, Teen Read Week Committee, Presidents Program Committees, and the Division & Membership Promotion Committee.

Amy has been selected as the new YAttitudes editor for YALSA. Amy says that future issues may include author interviews, further exploration of topics presented at conferences such as the New Directions or Teen Read Week, and discussion of the problems of working with teens including shrinking budgets, administrative advocacy, community issues and more. Amy plans on actively soliciting articles across the country and from school and public libraries of every size. If anyone has ideas, Amy would love to hear from you!

Amy and her husband, Kyle Dodson, were lucky enough to adopt their son, Joshua, in May 2003. Amy has been on the ALA Graphics Advisory committee for years and when Joshua was eight months old, they asked her see some pictures to possibly work for a bookmark. Amy’s family has been handing out the bookmarks like crazy and her father even carries them around in case he runs into someone who might want one. Amy has offered to have Joshua do a 'signing' at ALA Annual 2005 in Chicago! Check out Josh's bookmark!

Amy can be reached at aalessio@stdl.org