The guests for this episode are Carol Tilley, this year's Trends in YA presenter, and Denise Agosto, organizer for the event. The Trends in YA Presentation is an event that occurs each year at the Midwinter Conference. This year's presentation will be on Saturday, January 26th at 4:30 in room 213 in the Seattle Convention Center. Tilley will read from her research paper, which explores the history of comic books and their relationship with libraries.

For more information on Carol Tilley and her various projects, please visit her website at www.caroltilley.net/.

For this episode, Matt Moffett and YALSA Board Member Sarah Sogigian talk about Badges for Learning, a new educational inititative designed by the Mozilla Foundation and funded in part by the MacArthur Foundation and HASTAC. Matt and Sarah discuss the Badges concept in general as well as YALSA's involvement with Badges as a potential educational tool for its members.

This episode features three interviews, each covering a different aspect of this year's ALA Annual Convention in Anaheim, California. First up is Allison Tran from YALSA's Local Arrangements Committee, who shares some important and fun details about Anaheim and Orange County. We then hear from Gretchen Kolderup about the always popular Speed Networking Event and close with Linda Braun filling us in on her program, Being a Social Teen Advocate.

This episode's guest is Erin Knight, Learning Director for the Mozilla Foundation. Erin walks us through all the ins and outs of the new education initiative "Badges for Lifelong Learning", a developing system that will enable users to highlight and gain recognition for specialized learning and achievements outside the the standard classroom or workplace.

For this episode we are happy to bring back Jesse Karp, author of the new non-fiction book Graphic Novels in Your School Library.

For this episode we sit down with Megan Honig, editor-in-chief for YALS, YALSA's own quaterly journal. Megan tells us about some of the highlights of the November, 2011 issue as well as the brand new online component that will enhance the content of the print version of YALS.

This episode's guest is April Layne Pavis. As convener for YALSA's Teen Music Interest Group, April takes us on a whirlwind tour of music and ways to integrate into the programs at your own library.

Ted Anderson and Sarah Debraski of YALSA's The Hub blog return to the podcast as they challenge each other with another pair of books in their ongoing "Comfort Zone" series. Will Robin McKinley's Beauty press Ted to finally proclaim his love for fairy tale retellings? Will Sarah run away in terror from Evan Dorkin and Jill Thompson's graphic novel Beasts of Burden? Listen and find out!

For this episode we talk to Thomas Knowlton, librarian for the New York Public Library and Convener for YALSA's Serving New Adults Interest Group, about new adults: who they are, how to reach them and some of the unique programs they might be looking for. For further information please check out these links mentioned in the episode:

YALSA's Serving New Adults Interest Group: bit.ly/newadults-yalsa

New York Public Libraries Sci-Fi Summmer Program: bit.ly/scifisummer

This special edition of the podcast features Sarah Debraski and Ted Anderson of The Hub, YALSA's blog dedicated to information about teen reads.  Ted and Sarah decided to try something interesting to broaden their horizons: they each made a list of the types of YA books they don't read, and then each chose a book for the other person to read from those categories, to deliberately force themselves outside of their comfort zones and read something they normally wouldn't. Did it work? Read on!