Course Description

This course is designed to expose students to the multiple facets of youth services in public libraries within the context of “doing the job” of a youth librarian. Each week, the class will address a particular question and discussion will explore that issue and how it interweaves with related concepts of service. The final project is to design a library for youth, complete with mission statement, goals and objectives, philosophy statement, community assessment, building plan, budget plan, services plan, and potential programs. By the end of the semester, students should have both a theoretical and a practical knowledge of the youth services’ field.

Weekly Course Outline

Articles listed in the Readings section of the syllabus are on Blackboard in the “Course Documents” section.

January 10^th

CLASS CANCELLED, BRIAN AT ALISE CONFERENCE. Please make sure to do the readings for next week, so we can get off to a fast start. Start thinking about your personal philosophy of library service to youth (see assignment description at the bottom of this page).

SECTION 1: KNOWING US

January 17^th

Personal introductions, course overview and expectations

Day’s Questions: What’s the point of youth services, and what services should I provide?

- mission statements, goals and objectives, personal philosophies

- explore competencies for youth services librarians

- examine reference services for children and the reference interview

Readings:

Check out these webpages on mission statements:

Developing Mission Statements - http://www.mapnp.org/library/plan_dec/str_plan/stmnts.htm

Mission Statements (an overview) – http://www.ils.unc.edu/courses/2008_spring/inls733_001/missions.html

Review ALA competencies for children’s librarians - http://www.ala.org/ala/alsc/alscresources/forlibrarians/professionaldev/competencies.htm

Review ALA competencies for young adult librarians - http://www.ala.org/ala/yalsa/profdev/yacompetencies/competencies.cfm

January 24^th

Day’s Question: Librarian competencies? What are our roots and traditions? How can we characterize current practice?

- history of youth services

Readings: Sturm’s “20 Years Later” article, Jones’ “Do It Right” article, and Jenkin’s online History of Youth Services Librarianship at:

http://www.gslis.utexas.edu/~landc/fulltext/LandC_35_1_Jenkins.pdf

Assignment Due: Draft personal philosophy

SECTION 2: KNOWING THEM

January 31^st

Day’s Question: Whom do we serve, how to know them, and what services to offer them?

- child and YA development, age priorities of service, demographics and statistics, community profiling techniques

Readings:

Child and YA development:

Review the Youth Development websites below

http://childdevelopmentinfo.com/development/ (Overview of child development)

http://cyfernet.ces.ncsu.edu/cyfdb/browse_2pageAnncc.php?subcat=Child+Development&search=NNCC&search_type=browse (National Network for Child Care)

http://www.aacap.org/publications/factsfam/develop.htm and http://www.aacap.org/publications/factsfam/develop2.htm (Normal adolescent development)

http://faculty.plts.edu/gpence/html/kohlberg.htm (Kohlberg’s theory of moral development)

Explore the US Census site related to children: http://www.census.gov/population/www/socdemo/children.html

& the NC State Data Center site: http://sdc.state.nc.us/

also check out the statistical info on the capitolimpact.com gateway: http://www.capitolimpact.com/gw/

Assignment Due: Draft Mission and Goals

February 7^th

Day’s Question: How do we communicate effectively with youth?

- reference transactions with youth, communication strategies, youth information seeking strategies

Readings: Gable and Bishop/Salveggi articles, and a quick overview of the reference interview: http://web.utk.edu/~wrobinso/590ref_interview.html.

Assignment Due: Draft Community Assessment

SECTION 3: DESIGNING AND FUNDING

February 14^th

Day’s Question: How do I design my building/space?

- use of space issues and building design

Readings: peruse Dewe book that’s on reserve and focus on chapters 4 & 10. Also examine the layouts in chapters 7 & 12 for ideas. There are many books on library design (search UNC OPAC under: “s = library architecture” as a place to start your exploration. Have a look at a “retail layout” approach to design for libraries at: http://www.infotoday.com/MLS/jan05/koontz.shtml. See the 3D modeling possibilities at: http://www.librarydesign.com/foliocad.html. See photos of various Australiain libraries’ youth areas at: http://publib.slq.qld.gov.au/kidsplace/index.htm, and search the web for library youth services homepages. A web search on “library design” should yield some interesting URLs for further study. There’s also a Masters thesis about how location of youth services impacts how children use the library at: http://dagda.shef.ac.uk/dissertations/1996-97/sisson.pdf.

February 21^st

Day’s Question: How do I design and manage a collection?

- collection development planning and policies, review journals, publishers’ catalogs, thematic bibliographies

Readings: Patrick article. Work through the Collection Development Training website at: http://www.lib.az.us/cdt/. How do the issues discussed here apply specifically to work with youth?

Assignment Due: Draft Building Design Plan

February 28^th

Day’s Question: What technology should I provide?

- OPACs, educational/recreational CD-Roms, Internet, Social Networking, and specialized digital media….

- Guest presentation by Lara Handler, Outreach and Volunteer Services Librarian for the North Carolina Library for the Blind and Physically Handicapped

Readings: Wilford article. Have a look at my Technology for Children in Libraries (Powerpoint) at: http://www.ils.unc.edu/courses/2008_spring/inls733_001/childtech.ppt

March 6^th

Day’s Question: How do I make a budget and fund my services?

- kinds of budgets and grant-writing possibilities

Readings: Bayley and Deerr articles. See the Wisconsin Library program budget guidelines at: http://dpi.state.wi.us/pld/sysbudgetguide.html. Look at the line-item budget at: http://www.dixonlibrary.com/Policies/budget2003.htm as an example. See a template from a regional system at: http://dpi.wi.gov/pld/doc/programbudgetgrid.doc .

Assignment Due: Draft Collection Development Plan

March 13^th

No class due to SPRING BREAK

SECTION 4: PROGRAMMING

March 20^th

Day’s Question: How do I design a good children’s program?

Readings: Bauer, Dowd/Dixon, Nespeca, Wallace articles, and explore the many “youth services” books in the SILS library. Do a subject search in our OPAC on “children’s libraries—activity programs” for a list of the MANY books we have in our UNC libraries on this topic.

March 27^th

Day’s Question: How do I design a good young adult program?

Readings: Jones’ “Programming” article and explore the many “youth services” books in the SILS library.

Assignment Due: Draft Budget

SECTION 5: COMMUNICATING WITH OTHERS

April 3^rd

Day’s Question: How do I manage a staff?

- scheduling, setting priorities, kinds of employees and interactions, job descriptions and interviews, management styles and communication patterns

Readings: Explore the 101 library job interview questions at: http://www.geocities.com/aer_mcr/libjob/interview.html

Assignment Due: Draft of program

April 10^th

Day’s Question: How do I market my services and evaluate what I’ve done?

- designing announcements, contacting media, press releases

- statistics to keep, evaluation techniques

Readings: Block and Young articles. See also the Marketing Treasures onlines newletter for information professionals at: http://www.chrisolson.com/marketingtreasures/mtcurrent.html. For further reading, have a look at: http://www.librarysupportstaff.com/marketinglibs.html

SECTION 6: FINAL PROJECTS

April 17^th

Sharing of final projects

Assignment Due: Final written projects

April 24^th (last class)

Sharing of final projects

Assignment Due: Final written projects

Assignments

You have one big assignment this semester: to design a library for youth services. Throughout the semester you will be required to turn in drafts of the various parts of this project, each of which will be graded. These pieces are:

Draft Personal Philosophy	10%
Draft Mission and Goals	10%
Draft Community Assessment	10%
Draft Building Design Plan	10%
Draft Collection Development Plan	10%
Draft Budget	10%
Draft Program (appropriate for the audience you have chosen to serve)	10%
Final Project and Presentation	20%
Class Participation	10%

Assignment Descriptions:

Personal Philosophy

This is your chance to express your feelings about who you are as a future youth librarian. Include such issues as: priorities of service, things you feel a library should NOT do, how you feel about freedom of access to information, why you decided to serve children and how you feel it is best to serve them, and any other personal stands on pressing issues in the field. What do you believe in? What are you willing to stand up for? What are your values? What do you want to accomplish as a librarian? Focus on philosophical issues more than practical concerns (i.e., “I believe the library is the place to build children’s imaginations,” instead of “I want to have romance novels in the collection…” this latter statement is actually fine IF you use it as an example of a philosophical argument, for example…provide what the public wants, or offer a balanced collection).

Mission and Goals

Base this document on two things: 1) other mission and goals statements you find on the web or in published form; 2) your vision for your own library. I want you to design your mission and goals based on your personal philosophy and your developing concept of your final library project. What do you want your library to accomplish, and what goals will help you get there? You do NOT have to go to the level of Objectives here (i.e., the time specific, measurable guidelines by which you evaluate success).

Community Assessment

For this piece of the assignment, I want you to select a location for your library and research it. Find out the actual demographics and statistics about your locale, city, region, etc., see what it looks like from the air (MapQuest.com’s “aerial image” feature can do this) to get a sense of topography, and then put together a document that best summarizes what you’ve found. This can be a table, a text document, a powerpoint, etc. Your job, here, is to “situate” your new library in an actual, physical location with a community you can describe.

Building Design Plan

This will be a visual representation: a large poster diagram, a graph paper diagram, or a computer-generated diagram of the facility with labeled shelving, furniture, and accessories. I’ll be looking for youth appeal, functionality, good sight lines, good traffic flow, and other building design elements we discuss in class.

Collection Development Plan

A CD policy should have an introduction of some kind (many include a statement on intellectual freedom, an overview of the collection, assignment of responsibilities for collection management, a challenge procedure, etc.) and then the main part of the plan which includes collection level assignations to the various parts of the collection. An explanation of the collection level scheme should precede the actual division of the collection and the assignment of collecting levels in the document. Finally, some policies include a justification for each area (though this should be apparent from the mission and goals statement, some policies include it here as well so that the CD policy stands alone). I am most interested in how you assign collecting levels to your collection, as this shows me your priorities (which should integrate with your building design, budget, mission/goals, and your personal philosophy).

Budget

Your budget should be an allocation of funds for personnel and for your collection. It will be very individual, based on your design, and can be any type of budget that we mentioned in class (line-item, program, zero-based) except a lump sum! A line-item (perhaps crossed with a program budget) will be the most useful, as these are the types you’ll most likely encounter. I’m less interested in realism (i.e., actual costs of things) than in how you allocate the resources (i.e., I want to see your priorities and services played out in your money allocations, so I’ll look more at percent of total budget rather than actual figures…if you wish to make this assignment more useful to yourself, try to make it realistic as well).

Program

Your program should follow the Template for Thinking About Programming.

Final Project

The final written project will include the final version of these pieces (revised based on my feedback and your growing knowledge). I want to see an integration of your thoughts so that each piece merges with every other to form a working conceptual whole. Innovation and integration are the keys. Your grade will be part based on the project and part based on your presentation of it. Each class presentation is scheduled for 10 minutes. Due to the large enrolment in the course, you MAY NOT go over 10 minutes (I will signal you at 9 minutes and cut you off at 10 minutes). Your projects are worth more time than this, but we must give everyone equal stage space. It will be incumbent upon you to decide what to include so that we get the best understanding of your work and how your library forms a “functioning organism.”