Episode 910:Youth Services

Welcome to Season Nine of Linking Our Libraries! We are so happy to have you join us again! We are the Central Minnesota Libraries Exchange, and our members are all types of libraries and their staff.

This season we have been focusing on topics that are important to library support staff. We discussed each of the ten competency sets in the American Library Association’s Library Support Staff Certification program. Some of these may overlap with prior episodes, but this season looked specifically at the material the ALA has identified as important. We will link to the ALA’s program, if you want more information or want to sign up for one of their classes. 

Earlier this season we talked about the three required courses in this certification program. This week we are talking about one of the competencies that is optional: Youth Services. Today is our last topic! It’s been great talking about all of these ideas with you!

“These competencies are for support staff working in a public library in service to youth, from birth through age seventeen. Services to youth include collection development, programming, providing readers’ advisory and reference services, and teaching information literacy skills and related activities.”

Let’s take a look at each of the different components the ALA has identified as important here, and talk about a little information on each one.

1. Library Support Staff understand the library’s role in meeting the needs of all youth,

including those with special needs and from diverse backgrounds. Kids of all ages can use the materials, programs, and services of a library – any library. We are here to connect people  with information, and that means connecting everyone to the book, video, or other resource that will meet their needs.

2. Staffers should have a general understanding of the stages of childhood and adolescent development, and strategies to support the literacy skills of all youth. Of course, none of us needs to be an expert in child psychology. But it’s good to have a basic set of ideas about how different kids will react to different materials, and what kinds of books will appeal to them.

3. Library staff are familiar with print and digital library resources for youth, including award winners and classics, and assist with selecting resources for a youth collection. Everyone who works with kids and young adults should be familiar with the book awards that reach out to these ages. We did an entire episode on different book awards, and there are so many interesting ones! Bookmark a few of the big ones on your computer, print out the lists for patrons to see, and be sure you are buying these books for your collection.

4. Staff in the library should select appropriate materials for a particular youth, based on factors such as reading level, interest, and level of maturity. Note: this very much does NOT mean that only kids in third grade should be restricted to books marked “third grade.” This is contrary to the whole idea of a library! It’s our job to buy a variety of materials, because not everything appeals to everyone. It’s fine to guide people to books, to suggest books they may enjoy. It is definitely not fine to restrict what they can read. If someone wants to read a book above or below their grade level – that’s fine, it’s nobody’s business. 

5. Library staff are familiar with the best internet sites for youth, rules for safe navigation, and

technological applications for youth. The days of a library being just about books are long gone! We are all about information, and a lot of that is found online. Library people can be pivotal in helping people to develop their skills in safely and effectively using online resources.

6. Staffers understand and can explain the legal and policy issues, including the rights of minors, regarding youth services in libraries. This should be just an understanding of the policies and procedures of your library. Your board or administrators should have thought though the legality and the broader professional ideas involved in your library’s policies. The intent behind all library decisions should be figuring out how to encourage more use, how to allow more access, and how to meet the needs of all patrons – including young ones. 

7. Staff in the library should understand and apply customer service strategies to encourage library use, establish a welcoming atmosphere, and maintain a safe and comfortable environment for all youth, their parents, and other caregivers. Hopefully this is obvious, and your library is making this happen. But there are libraries still stuck in the bad old days of shushing people, yelling at kids who get excited, or even worse – refusing to check out books to a kid with fines on a library card without giving them another option. Every library is there to serve the needs of the community, and a lot of that community is young. 

8. Library staff communicate effectively with youth, their parents and other caregivers, other library staff, and the personnel of organizations serving youth.This may involve setting up a social media account that your community will visit, having a calendar on your website, or sending out a regular newsletter. You want to reach out to kids directly when you can, and to provide information to the people who are involved in the lives of kids – including parents, teachers, and other organization members. 

9. Staffers assist with creating, promoting, implementing, and evaluating library programs and

services. Programs are so important in a library! Just having books on the shelves, especially when they are not updated very often, is not enough for good service. Programs do not need to be too complicated or expensive – they just need to reach out to kids of all ages to connect them with the material in a library. We have articles every single week about STEM projects, and suggestions on how libraries can take that basic science project and share it across all kinds of different subjects: art, creative writing, history, math, and more. Take some of these ideas and use them for your own library!

10. Staff members in a library understand the value of cooperating with schools and other organizations and work with them to serve the community’s youth. No matter what type of library you are in, there are other organizations in the community that reach out to young people. Connecting your services and materials to those groups strengthens both of you, and provides a more seamless experience for kids and their families!

11. Library staff understand and apply the best practices for providing reference services for youth and refer to a librarian when appropriate. We have talked many times about providing good reference services, and it is a skill everyone should practice. A lot of the questions people ask in libraries are fairly straightforward, and can be answered easily. And when things get more complicated, it’s good to know who to send patrons to so their tougher questions can be answered effectively.

Do you feel like you have a quick understanding of these components? There is, of course, a lot more to learn. We can all spend our careers working on enhancing these skills! Use the CMLE podcast resources as a place to start, and if you want to sign up for the ALA/APA classes to get more information, we link to them in our show notes. 

Books Read

Now, let’s get to the part of every episode that we love: sharing a book we are reading. We will link to these books on our shownotes pages, and the link will take you to Amazon. You probably know this, but when you click one of our links and then buy anything at all from Amazon, they give us a small percentage of their profits. That support really helps us, and although it’s anonymous so we won’t know it was you – we appreciate you taking the time to help us!

Conclusion

This was a quick overview of all ten of the topics in the ALA/APA’s certification topics for library staffers. And if you want to find out more about getting certified yourself, check the website (linked in our show notes), or just email us at admin@cmle.org.

It has been great talking about library skills with you all season! This is our final show of season nine – but don’t worry about us leaving you. We will be back here on Tuesday with another season of our series Browsing Books. We will keep looking at counties in Minnesota, finding an interesting fact about each, and suggesting books you can enjoy for yourself or recommend to your patrons. Subscribe today to our sister podcast: Reading With Libraries! We will start a new season of this book group next Thursday. Join us each week for a new genre, tasty beverages to share, and a lot of books to discuss!