Youth Matters
 By Jennifer Burek Pierce
American Libraries Columnist
Assistant professor of library and information science, University of Iowa, Iowa City
youthmatters@ala.org
June/July 2007
New Year, New Beginnings
Children’s services in the real world
Matthew Arnold once wrote that “Each year we see/ Breeds new beginnings.” This year sees me beginning a new column for American Libraries that we’ve decided to call Youth Matters.
After some debate, we chose this name for both its meanings: that young people are an important constituency in the library community and that there is much content with potential to inform the work of youth services librarians. This implies a broad perspective, recognizing that even traditional college students who enter the academic librarian’s province are still young people with ongoing developmental issues as well as information needs shaped by their stage of life.
In theory
There is no shortage of data about the need for talented and capable adults committed to supporting young people’s growth. Author Paul Tough called attention to measures of youth reading skills post–No Child Left Behind in the November 26 New York Times Magazine. Noting that reading scores relied on as progress indicators declined between 2002 (the year NCLB was enacted) and 2005, Tough stressed that involved professionals can help children improve their learning skills; similarly, University of Pittsburgh psychiatry and pediatrics professor Ronald Dahl has emphasized that adults who provide guidance to young people help ensure good developmental outcomes.
Youth Matters, then, will feature the people, places, and resources that make a difference in young people’s lives by preparing them for a lifetime of learning and library use. In these columns, I hope to share conversations with librarians serving toddlers and college students; to explore issues involved in making books, electronic resources, and services available to young people; and to share ideas generated by researchers who study young people’s reading or information seeking. From time to time, particularly in light of AL’s centenary, I’ll indulge my penchant for historical subjects.
In practice
The rising generation of youth services librarians has shown me something about how children’s services work gets done in the real world. Beth, one of my first students at Indiana University at Indianapolis, impressed everyone by bringing in a nationally known author to speak with tweens and teens at her other-than-well-heeled library and regaled us with a behind-the-scenes perspective that included offering this particularly easygoing writer the only hospitality she could afford—her own guest room.
Elsewhere, Beth’s classmate Dawn began looking at her system’s catalog records for controversial titles with track records as challenged or banned books. She found that though such works ought to be on the shelf, they were often missing, and began reordering titles depicting issues such as adolescent sexuality. Neither her background as a minister’s daughter nor her older colleagues’ warnings that she—let alone young adult patrons—was too young to read such books deterred her.
Andrew, a University of Iowa student on the cusp of graduation, is moving into a full-time youth services position in a small Iowa town. Already, he has offered to partner with MLS student volunteers as he helps plan his first summer reading program. Mikki, another Iowa student, somehow manages to attend classes, provide tech support for users of the university’s course-management software, do archival research, and offer popular storytimes for toddlers that are rebroadcast on local access television.
These and other newer members of the profession amaze, amuse, and sometimes even startle me with their strategies for working with young people. As the new year unfolds, I’ll be sharing the words, wisdom, and difficulties that come with earnest efforts to demonstrate that youth matters.
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