YALSA’s “The Future of Library Services for and with Teens: A Call to Action” was released in Jan. 2014. Image courtesy of YALSA
Just three months after its release, the American Library Association’s (ALA) Young Adult Library Services Association’s (YALSA) report “The Future of Library Services for and with Teens: A Call to Action” is slowly making its way through the school and public arena, academic institutions, and YALSA itself giving academic students, librarians, and stakeholders new marching orders on how to better engage their teen patrons.
Published in January 2014, the YALSA report appeared poised to create a tidal ripple of change across the library community. The 56-page report addresses the need for a national conversation around how young adults are served by libraries today—and how to better position library centers to foster and drive learning in the future. The report is also being seen as set of best practices, which YALSA will use to re-evaluate its own best practices guidelines, says Beth Yoke, YALSA’s director.
“We’re looking at our committee structure to see if it’s aligned with the report,” says Yoke. “Are [the] tasks they’re doing supporting the findings of the report?”
First steps at YALSA included the launch of weekly Google Hangouts on different topics from cultural competency to connected learning, topics addressed in the report. The group also launched the Twitter hashtag #act4teens to encourage chatter, and YALSA plans to continue to flesh these topics out during YALSA’s webinars held on the first Thursday of every month. The report will also be discussed in detail at this year’s ALA’s annual conference (June 26-July 1 in Las Vegas, NV), says Yoke.
In the meantime, librarians and others are also starting to use the report in their own training with student teachers and librarians in the public library sphere, and community groups as well. Yoke mentions Linda W. Braun, a co-author of the report, a past YALSA president and current youth services librarian at the Seattle Public Library, who held a two-day training discussion in Seattle about how librarians, as well as youth services groups, could begin to re-address how they work with teens.
“We’re not just trying to reach the library community,” says Yoke. “We’re also trying to reach after school providers, for example. So we’re looking for opportunities outside the library to roll out the report.”
“The biggest ah-ha moment for my graduate librarian students is the way the report positions teen librarians as bridge builders between home and school,” says Renee Hobbs, professor and founding director of the Harrington School of Communication and Media at The University of Rhode Island. “I think many of my students didn’t appreciate the home and school life connections.”
Many of the students that roll through Hobbs’ program are future librarians, and they read the report, and then blogged about the findings as part of their curriculum, she says.
Yoke says YALSA, which earned a nearly $100,000 grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services to create the report, is applying for another round of grant funding to see if they can pass funds to libraries and help support their implementation of some of the changes outlined in the report.
“The first phase was to have a discussion,” says Yoke. “Now in the rollout, we want to have people adopt the changes, whether that’s through financing or continuing education, or whatever they need.”