June 27, 2019 (Virtual) Meeting Minutes


MLA YSS Meeting Minutes 6/27/19 (Online meeting)

Present: Marissa Antosh (Duxbury); Katrina Ireland (Northborough) Bethany Coito (New Bedford); Carol Gafford (Swansea)

 

          1. Executive Board Updates

               a. In the near future, YSS will be meeting to talk about FY20 and the direction of the section under impending new leadership.

               b. There are two new official sections of MLA: Reader’s Advisory and Leadership. Leadership is set up to be a kind of “support group”, especially for those who found themselves in a position unexpectedly.

               c. MLA is migrating to the G Suite in the near future. All of YSS’ documents will live in the G cloud soonish.

               d. Conference next year is back in Hyannis, scheduled for May 18-20.

               e. Something to remember: sections can be disbanded if they fall below a certain amount of members. We have a plethora of members in YSS, so no worries! Is there a way we can incentivize folks to attend meetings?

 

2. Conference Debrief

                a. Most programs we very well received. Great praise for Beyond Sound it Out! Started using things we learned from that right away.

                b. FanCon was awesome! It was sort of isolated in that back room, but once they put a sign directing people to it, attendance was better. We’ll be doing it again next year; hopefully we can reach out to more libraries who are doing programming like this and get their input/participation in the MLA Con program.

 

3. Nominating Committee

                a. Member-at-large Southeast has been tapped by Marissa. Bethany Coito from New Bedford will be filling the post. Welcome Bethany!

 

4. Fundraising

                a. Marissa started a fundraising Google doc so we can all add our fundraising ideas in one central location.

                b. Still considering selling the magnets and doing the pet photo planner.

                c. Carol suggested a Fandom University as part of our fundraising efforts in the future. Some kind of intro class that people can take to get ideas, be introduced to the most prevalent fandoms enough to know what kids are talking about and run programs around them.

 

5. Future meeting plans

                a. Central location for September meeting TBD. Possibly meeting in Greenfield (Western MA) in November. Tewksbury (NE) for January, New Bedford on March 19.

                b. Possibly plan an unconference for the coming year?