CLA 2024 Young Adult Service Award Winner: Autumn Thompson

The Bay Area Young Adult Librarian (BAYA) group and California Library Association’s Young Services Interest Group (CLA YSIG) are proud to announce the winner of the 2024 California Library Association, Young Adult Services Award: Autumn Thompson.

Autumn Thompson is currently a library assistant for the Contra Costa County Library system. Autumn started at the Bay Point Library a little over two years ago, around the same time she started the MLIS program at San Jose State. The Bay Point Library was inside a middle school, and it was there that she began working with the teens and tweens. Autumn loved working with them and missed working with so many teens and tweens when she moved to the Concord Library. At the time, the Concord Library did not have a teen services librarian so the library assistants worked to provide programs for teens. Autumn loves working with teens and encouraging them to pursue their interests. She finds joy in creating programs they are surprised to see at their local library. 

One day when talking about program ideas with her manager, Kimberli Buckley,  mentioned that she had always wanted to do a prom dress giveaway. Autumn loved the idea and wanted to make it happen. She immediately got to work on creating the Pop-up Prom Shop! Autumn had previously volunteered with the Princess Project in San Francisco and was able to draw a bit from that experience. When researching prom attire giveaways, she found various other organizations that helped provide free prom dresses but did not find any organizations that provided free suits for prom. Autumn decided to expand on the initial idea and ask for donations of prom dresses, suits, and accessories so there would hopefully be something for everyone. Prom can be such a milestone event for teens but some miss out due to the large number of expenses that go along with it. Many families are still recovering from the pandemic and shelter in place, and many teens missed out on important experiences during that time. She wanted to find a way to help relieve some of the financial stress around prom.

Autumn and Kimberli agreed that if they could help even 10 teens, it would be worth it. Autumn worked on flyers to request donations and social media posts. She and Kimberli also reached out to various organizations for donations but had no luck. It didn’t take long for word to spread though and the donations to come pouring in. The program received overwhelming community support and hundreds of dresses, suits, and accessories were donated! Some of the prom dresses were donated by recent graduates who weren’t able to use their prom dress due to the shelter-in-place but wanted to pass them along in hopes that someone else would enjoy wearing it. Autumn worked with the prom coordinator at Mount Diablo High School to hold pop-up events at the school. She also reached out to other local high schools and the local pride prom committee to spread the word about the various events. With the help of fellow library assistant Katherine Bergman, Autumn and Katherine were able to organize all the donations and curate different collections for the various pop-up events. Through outreach to local high schools and events held at the Concord Library, they were able to help over 300 teens! Some of the donated attire also helped provide teens with free professional wear.

The Concord Library staff weren’t exactly prepared for the vast amount of donations they received, so for months clothes racks filled all the empty spaces in the staff areas and meeting room in the library. Since the collections only consisted of what was donated, it was difficult to make size inclusive collections. Autumn is planning to hold the event again this year and hopes to hold pop-up shops at more local high schools. She feels as though they got a bit of a late start last year with the events being held throughout March, so she is planning to hold the events a bit earlier. She found out while holding the events at the high school that the prom tickets are sold early in the school year and increase in price the later you buy them. She hopes that holding the event a little earlier will also help with the ticket prices. Many of the teens were so happy about the prom attire they received. Numerous teens even stated that they weren’t planning on attending prom before finding their free attire at the pop-up shop. Teens and parents expressed how much of a relief it was to not have to worry about the expense of attire, especially since it would probably only be worn once. Autumn wants to encourage anyone who is thinking about holding a similar event at their library to give it a try! She says it was a lot of work but she found it to be such a rewarding and heartwarming experience.