Professional Listservs

This semester I subscribed to two professional listservs which I felt would be useful in my volunteer work in the children's department of my local library as well as in my future career as a children's or young adult librarian.  These listservs are the Association for Library Service to Children List and the YALSA Book Discussions List.  

The former listserv deals with children's library services on a more general level.  Some topics that have been discussed recently are suggestions for the 2015 Newbery Award, providing early literacy bags for new parents, and conferences/webinars that may be of interest to children's librarians.  There have been quite a few programs mentioned that I was not previously aware of, and I can certainly see the benefit of following this listserv for someone who is interested in staying up-to-date on current issues facing librarians, specifically children's librarians.  

The latter list, as suggested by the title, deals with the more specific subject of books, specifically books geared towards young adults.  Questions and discussions are mostly reader's advisory related or trying to find a book that a patron has mentioned but may not know much about.  I was amazed at how specific some of the questions were, and surprised at how many titles members of the listserv were able to come up with.  Excuse the cliche, but it is clear that when it comes to reader's advisory and title hunting, two (or three, or ten) heads are certainly better than one!  There are a great deal of books out there and it is impossible for every librarian to be aware of all of them.  This is where being a member of a listserv really comes in handy. 

The only real issue I could see arising from joining a listserv is the sheer amount of email traffic that accumulates in one's inbox.  Personally, I do not like having a cluttered inbox but I am also not the best about clearing mine out on a regular basis.  I need to filter my listserv emails so that they go to a separate folder from my regular emails, and also to make a point of reviewing and deleting them as often as possible.