Spotlight on Sara Ryan

Sara Ryan is the Teen Services Specialist for the Multnomah County Library system in Portland, Oregon. Her position was created last year. Since the fall of 1997, she has worked at Multnomah County Library. Before coming to Multnomah County Library, Sara was one of the founders of the Internet Public Library at the University of Michigan. She worked in both reference and teen services for the IPL. She moved to Portland in 1997 to take a job as a school outreach librarian for Multnomah County Library, and she held that position until last year when she became the Teen Services Specialist.

Sara’s first YALSA committee was Outstanding Books for the College Bound. After that, she served on the Website Advisory, the YALSA Board, the Nominating Committee, and now the Editorial Advisory in addition to being an SUS trainer. Sara has made many friends through YALSA, and all these terrific people double as advisors, sounding boards, and inspirations. She hopes to do the same for others.

Sara’s professional publications include: articles for Library & Information Science Research, School Library Journal, Journal of Youth Services in Libraries, and she was one of VOYA’s “Tag Team Tech” columnists from 2001-3. She also works on the Teens section of Multnomah County Library’s website. She hopes to get teens more involved in creating content for it, beyond the book, movie, & game reviews that they currently provide.

As a fiction writer, she has published a novel, Empress of the World (Speak, 2003), which was a YALSA Best Book for Young Adults. The sequel to Empress, entitled The Rules for Hearts, will be coming out next fall. She has also collaborated with her husband, the cartoonist Steve Lieber, on several short stories in comics form, which can be found in Cicada magazine, Hellboy: Weird Tales Volume 1, and directly online. With a word of warning, not all of her comics are YA! Her personal site can be found at: www.sararyan.com.

Recently Sara has collaborated with Caleb Tucker-Raymond, the service coordinator for Oregon’s statewide online reference service, L-net, to do a series of workshops for reference librarians called “k thanx: working with teens online.” At Multnomah County Library, she is coordinating a series of trainings for all public services staff at her library system’s 17 locations called “Teens@YourLibrary,” which covers what teens want and need from the library, recent research about the teen brain, strategies for dealing with tough situations, and the positive youth development approach to working with teens.

Sara has too many favorites to select one YA author as a favorite. We also asked a fun question, if she landed on a desert island what two YA books would she want? Her answer was: “Well, one would be whatever manuscript I’m working on. But I can’t narrow it down to just one other book. How about if I have my manuscript, plus an iPod with a ton of storage for audiobooks?”

As to her view on where YA publishing is heading, she thinks: “there’ll be more and more crossover books -- books published for teens that are read by adults as well as teens. Lots more graphic novels, definitely. Also, in the schools there’s such a huge demand for high interest, low reading level titles for struggling readers and English language learners that I’d be amazed if that didn’t become a more prominent part of the market.”

She enjoys working with teens because it’s challenging, rewarding, and often includes snacks. When asked why she became a librarian, she replied, “Both of my parents are librarians. It was genetic.” Did you know that she is taking a beginning trapeze and acrobatics class?