YA Staff: Knowledge, skills and abilities

Offering quality customer service is an important responsibility for a young adult librarian. The best way to find out what those services should be like is from the teens. The sample survey distributed in class was a good example of a way to evaluate the library services because it included most of the library services. The survey had given the option to choose which ones need improvement and which ones were done well.

According to our manual there is a lot of training to be done with teens and teachers. This is something that I thought about today when I was at the "Back to School" Meeting at the Grand Army Plaza. This meeting talked about a program that will be available for high school students grades 10-12 who are interested in working in libraries. This program is called a "Multicultural Internship" Program where 50 high achieving teens will do 200 hours of service from November to June and will receive a $250 stipend for their work. This is a great way to teach teens to be information literate and to be able to use those skills further on in their career.

In addition, the Brooklyn Public Library has established a special link for parents and teachers on their website to get helpful information. Librarians need coordinators of young adult services to answer questions concerning improvement of services to teens in the libraries. The library is flexible and works better if it takes time to address these questions. Librarians are proud of their hard work and they give each other credit for goals achieved throughout the year. If a program worked for a certain library it goes into a special survey called a "Survey Monkey." I learned a lot of important library information at the meeting and I hope that I will be able to participate in the ones to come. It is difficult to reach the ideal reference service mentioned in the manual but if you try to address most of the concerns and show that you care about teens this will improve library attendance and circulation.

Specific service audience

The Prensky article made the idea of learning more fun. I think that using video games such as The Monkey Wrench is an exciting new perspective on learning. The article is optimistic about the benefits of this type of learning. I believe that most educators are interested in making education more fun and this could be a sign of progress. Personally blogging is not new to me but I am still trying to get used to this new way of learning that is used in so many of my courses. For example a student may post something incorrect in a blog but the professor might never comment on or correct the mistake. I find this counterproductive. Unless the students have better knowledge than the professor how would you know that you are getting the optimal education you are there for. Maybe this is just a way for making it easier for students to express their thoughts or make them more significant because it is published for all to see. There are several internal assets involved in this type of learning such as achievement motivation and personal power. Those assets are definitely important in the development of young adults.

Adolescent development and demography

Youth can be a useful source to the community. This is an external developmental asset which gives teens helpful roles in their community. This provides empowerment to the adolescents. As someone who spends time in a library I could see that the teen volunteers are very helpful with the younger children and toddlers. Volunteer programs give teens the opportunity to contribute to their community in a positive way. Teens should be supervised by the librarians but given the autonomy to choose their own material and use their own techniques to reach out to the younger children. Librarians should provide guidance and suggestions if necessary.

According to the chapter 1 Pierce reading librarians might not know what the teens interests are if they base their conclusions on the entertainment media market. Pierce speaks about the segmented programming which are more specialized programs that attract a particular type of audience. Researchers predict that the media will divide as the new media increases. Multiculturalism might increase but it is difficult to make any assumptions about broad preferences. The chapter ends with the statement, "our interests in engaging teens with books and other media are best served by good information about adolescence." But where can we get this information? The author leaves us in the dark.