Sarah Flowers - Crash Course in Young Adult Services

Crash Course in Dealing with Difficult Library Customers

Shelley E. Mosley, Dennis C. Tucker, and Sandra Van Winkle

Crash Course in Childrens Services, Second Edition

Penny Peck

Crash Course in Collection Development, Second Edition

Wayne Disher

Crash Course in Marketing for Libraries, Second Edition

Susan W. Alman and Sara Gillespie Swanson

Crash Course in Readers Advisory

Cynthia Orr

Crash Course in Storytime Fundamentals, Second Edition

Penny Peck

Crash Course in Basic Cataloging with RDA

Heather Lea Moulaison and Raegan Wiechert

Crash Course in Weeding Library Collections

Francisca Goldsmith

Crash Course in Technology Planning

Christopher D. Brown

Crash Course in Library Budgeting and Finance

Glen E. Holt and Leslie E. Holt

Crash Course in eBooks

Michele McGraw and Gail Mueller Schultz

Crash Course in Contemporary Reference

Francisca Goldsmith

Sarah Flowers

Crash Course

Copyright 2017 Sarah Flowers

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Flowers, Sarah, 1952 author.

Title: Crash course in young adult services / Sarah Flowers.

Description: Santa Barbara : Libraries Unlimited, [2017] | Series: Crash course | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2017014160 (print) | LCCN 2017038317 (ebook) | ISBN 9781440851711 (ebook) | ISBN 9781440851704 (alk. paper)

Subjects: LCSH: Young adults librariesUnited States. | Libraries and teenagersUnited States.

Classification: LCC Z718 (ebook) | LCC Z718 .F57 2017 (print) | DDC 027.62/6dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017014160

ISBN: 978-1-4408-5170-4
EISBN: 978-1-4408-5171-1

212019181712345

This book is also available as an eBook.

Libraries Unlimited
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ABC-CLIO, LLC
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This book is printed on acid-free paper

Manufactured in the United States of America

Working with teens in the library can be challenging, fun, exhilarating, frustrating, inspirational, and exhaustingsometimes all at once! In this book, I will use the terms teens and young adults interchangeably, referring to young people in adolescencebasically those from 12 to 18 years old, or from seventh grade to senior year in high school. These young people are going through massive changes in their brains and in their bodies. They are no longer children, but they arent quite adults yet either.

The teenage years have long been recognized as difficult ones, both for teens and for the adults who deal with them. In The Winters Tale, one of Shakespeares characters says:

I would there were no age between ten and three-and-twenty, or that youth would sleep out the rest; for there is nothing in the between but getting wenches with child, wronging the ancientry, stealing, fightingHark you now! Would any but these boiled brains of nineteen and two-and-twenty hunt in this weather? (Act III, Scene 3)

But they are also years of astonishing growth and development, when young people find their lifes passion and begin to be recognizably the people they will become as adults. Just to give you a visual image of the changes that go on in the teen years, take a minute and think about the Harry Potter books and movies. In the first book (and movie), Harry, Ron, and Hermione were 11-year-olds, and the actors who played them in the movies were also 11 and 12 years old. By the final book in the series, they were 17, and nearly adult. In the movies, the actors were 17 and 18 years old during the fifth movie (Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince).

My own experience of working with teens has taken place in public libraries in California, as well as in my own home, where I raised three sons. I have been an active member of the Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA) for over 20 years, including a term as YALSA president. In addition, I have been teaching online and in-person courses on working with teens in libraries for the past seven years. In all of those capacities, I have picked up information about teens that I will share with you in this book.

This book is aimed primarily at those of you who work in small or medium-sized libraries, where you are unlikely to have a dedicated teen services specialist who has training in working with teens.

In , well start by looking at the teen brain and exploring what exactly is going on during those formative years. In addition, well take a look at how life is different for members of the post-millennial generation than it was for their predecessors.

focuses on those tough behavioral issues, and especially on how to have positive interactions with teens in the library. Well look at how to differentiate between truly dangerous behaviors and those that are unwelcome, but merely distracting, and well see how teen participation in programs and services can help you help them.

is about teen collections: how to find and select materials for teens, how to do readers advisory with teens, and how to booktalk with teens. In addition, well look at the concept of transliteracythe ability to read, write, and interact across a wide range of media.

In , I give you some tips on doing programming with and for teens, including planning, organizing, publicizing, and evaluating programs.

focuses on teens and their informational needs: homework help, information literacy, using the library catalog and other resources, and dealing effectively with school assignments.

looks at teen spaces and discusses how to create a teen-friendly library even when your building restricts your ability to have a dedicated teen area. Well also look at policies and how they affect your interactions with teens in the library.

In , well look at how to advocate for teens, and how to provide them equal access to materials and services in your library. This includes a discussion about handling challenges to materials, how to manage computer use and how to speak up for teens in your library and your community.

These core values are accountability, collaboration, compassion, excellence, inclusion, innovation, integrity, professional duty, and social responsibility. In this book, well be talking about the ways all of these core values come into play in day-to-day interactions with teens in the library.

If you are reading this book, you have already exhibited some of these values, or at least the desire to attain them. So, lets dive in and talk about teens and libraries and how they are good for each other!

for the full list of core values and descriptions of how a person practicing each value will act in a library setting.