YALSA seeks member comments on new evaluation tool

CHICAGO — The Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA), a division of the American Library Association, invites its members to comment on the draft of its teen services evaluation tool (PDF) at www.surveymonkey.com/s/EvalToolYALSA. The survey is open Oct. 1 to Nov. 15.

Once finalized, YALSA’s goal is for librarians to use the tool to evaluate a public library’s overall level of success in providing services to teens, aged 12-18. Potential users of this tool include library administrators, library trustees, teen services librarians, community members and job-seekers hoping to assess a library’s commitment to teen services.

The areas for evaluation are derived primarily from YALSA’s Competencies for Librarians Serving Youth: Young Adults Deserve the Best, revised by YALSA in 2010.

Comments are sought in four areas:

• Accuracy: does the content accurately reflect the needs and focus of what high-quality service to teens today needs to be? If not, what is missing?

• Clarity: is the document clear and succinct? Is it free of jargon? If not, what specific improvements can be made?

• Completeness: are all key areas of skills, knowledge and service covered? If not, what is missing?

• Ease of use: how successfully do you think the tool overall could be used by the primary target audiences — directors and teen librarians — in order to evaluate teen services? If not easily, what could be changed to make it more successful as an evaluation tool?

Questions can be directed to Kim Patton, YALSA president, at kim.patton@kclibrary.org or Sarah Flowers, who chaired the committee to develop the tool, at sarahflowers@charter.net.

For more than 50 years, YALSA has been the world leader in selecting books, videos and audiobooks for teens. For more information about YALSA or for lists of recommended reading, viewing and listening, go to www.ala.org/yalsa/booklists, or contact the YALSA office by phone, (800) 545-2433, ext. 4390, or e-mail, yalsa@ala.org.