By Allison Riggs
As a newer librarian, I always love learning about new resources to help me be the best librarian I can be. It’s even more helpful when I have all of those resources in one spot to help remind myself what sites I should be regularly checking. I have made this list of resources over the past year and want to share it with you! You may already know a lot of these resources, but I hope you find at least one or two new ones that you can use. I have listed the resources in alphabetical order with each resource’s link and a short description of what it has to offer.
Book Riot
For this resource, I signed up for their Young Adult newsletter and it is forever helpful, and just plain fun to read. It sometimes features upcoming titles, book lists, and YA movie adaptation news.
Booklist Webinars
https://www.booklistonline.com/webinars
Looking for free webinars about upcoming teen titles? This site is for you! They offer hour long webinars, and if you can’t watch the webinar live you can access it whenever it is convenient for you. To make it even easier, you can sign up for their webinar newsletter and you’ll automatically get notified whenever they have an upcoming webinar.
Epic Reads
This site is run by Harper Collins Publishers. It features monthly new YA release round ups, fun quizzes, and a variety of bookish content. I get a lot of inspiration from this site for book displays. It also helps me keep up with the upcoming popular YA title announcements.
Instagram/Bookstagram
https://www.instagram.com/explore/tags/bookstagram/
There are hundreds of bookish accounts that you can follow on Instagram. Just looking at the #bookstagram or #yalit tags are super helpful to see different books coming out, what’s popular on Instagram, and to find new gems you didn’t even know about! There are also some great library and librarian bookstagrams that are very helpful and fun to follow as well.
I couldn’t have a list of online resources for librarians and not include Pinterest. I get some great craft ideas for programming from Pinterest!
Programming Librarian
http://programminglibrarian.org/
This is an ALA run site, and I have gotten some awesome programming inspiration from this site. You can browse programming ideas by price, audience, topic, or type of library.
School Library Journal
Their website is filled with wonderful articles and reviews. I love their Read Woke articles by Cicely Lewis! They also have a very helpful blog full of programming ideas and posts on challenges teen librarians face. It’s called Teen Librarian Toolbox.
Stacked Books
This blog is a great resource for us teen librarians in charge of their teen nonfiction collections. It also has a lot of other great readers’ advisory lists as well. This is a great collection development tool.
Teen Services Underground
https://www.teenservicesunderground.com/
Every teen librarian should be checking out this blog. They have a large amount of programming ideas, readers’ advisory lists, and they always have a steady stream of new posts being published.
We Need Diverse Books
If you haven’t checked out this website yet, you really should. They provide great resources!
YALSA (Young Adult Library Services Association)
YALSA has an abundance of information for teen librarians including book lists for collection development, information on teen growth and development, and more. Their site can be a little overwhelming, but worth a look. They also have a blog with book award announcements. It’s called The Hub.
Young Adult Services Forum (ILA) Facebook Group
https://www.facebook.com/groups/ILAYASF/
Teen librarians use this space to discuss books, programming, upcoming conferences, and to ask for advice. The forum also runs a fun Tournament of Books at the beginning of the year!
Illinois Library Association 