For Immediate Release: January 19, 2006

New Young Adult Services Manager Tracey Firestone
Joins Oakland Public Library Staff

(Oakland, CA) Oakland Public Library is happy to announce that Tracey Firestone started her new job as Manager of Young Adult Services at the library on Tuesday, January 17, 2006. Ms. Firestone comes to Oakland from Bellport, New York, where her efforts to date have distinguished her as a national leader in library services for teens. She will oversee a department of nine professional and paraprofessional staff.

Firestone brings a wealth of experience from her last position as Young Adult Specialist where she served as a consultant and trainer for staff in the 56-member libraries of the Suffolk Cooperative Library System of New York. She's published and presented papers on teen library services and other topics for the American Library Association (ALA), the Young Adult Library Services Association, VOYA: The Voice for Youth Advocates, among others. Firestone currently serves on the Editorial Board of VOYA. Besides her experience in young adult library services, Firestone brings a special expertise in library Web resources. Until recently, she served on ALA 's Web Advisory Committee and was a contributing author to Thinking Outside the Book: Alternatives for Today's Teen Library Collections (Libraries Unlimited, 2004).

Firestone earned her degree in Library Sciences at Queens College of the City University of New York in 1993. She served as an adjunct professor at that same school starting in 2004 teaching Planning and Delivering Young Adult Services in the Public Library. She also taught Fundamentals of Library Science at the SUNY Stony Brook School of Professional Development.

The Oakland Public Library is a department of the City of Oakland .

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