Public Libraries Seminar Discussion #3: Youth Services
12 September 2024
Youth Services is dedicated to serving the children and young adults within the community by providing them with resources, services, and programs to cater to their diverse interests and developmental needs. There are different aspects to youth services that librarians focus on, one of which is diverse & special needs. Diversity is an essential part of the library as it demonstrates the importance of and the respect towards the diverse population that make up the community. This is especially true for the youth, as it allows them to affirm their own cultural identities and connect with other cultures. Special needs is also an important aspect of the library as these individuals are one of the minority groups that make up a part of the community who deserve to be represented within the institution.
• Our annotated bibliography is about diversity and accessibility in youth services in libraries.
• In libraries, both programming and collection development are key aspects of library services!
• Some of our sources are focused on improving diversity within our collections, as well as providing lessons for potential programs.
• Some of our sources are focused on accessibility within library, encouraging community collaboration and accessible materials.
After going through the annotated bibliography, answer the following questions:
1. Considering your own hypothetical library, how would you prioritize what changes to make to your collection after reading about some of these issues?
2. What challenges prevent libraries from providing for the needs of special needs youth and their families?
Considering past experience that I've had with special needs kids in a classroom, and pairing it with what I know about my current system, Central Rappahannock Regional Library (CRRL), I would probably put a lot more focus on making space and events for special needs youth and caregivers, preferably with some nontraditional solutions. Book-wise, collection diversity in a conventional sense is far from a "solved" problem at CRRL. But, after coming to witness the intricacies of managing and adding to CRRL's collection in my internship, I do know that trying to ensure every ethnic group and disability and gender and what have you is an effort that is constantly worked towards by branch librarians, despite the interlocking limits imposed by budgets and publisher output. Special needs youth, however, is one population that gets even less, probably diminutive amounts of attention compared to their "normal," general AuADHD peers.
Now, I should preface things with by saying my exposure to CRRL's Youth Services decision-making is rather limited—unlike every other branch in the system, which are laid out on a single ground floor, my primary workplace is a remodeled, 18th century elementary school with three aboveground levels, meaning there's not nearly the same level of physical commingling and collaboration as the other branches. There's no small chance that I might be missing some essential details that present an imperfect picture of what YS is actually doing for special needs kids. What I can say with certainty is that the time allotted to special needs is tiny compared to other offerings, with a sole Sensory Time storytime offered two out of thirty days of each month. Plain pragmatism keeps things limited to twice a month, as while these storytimes are designed to accommodate 15 children and their caregivers, actual attendance of Sensory Times have never climbed above 8 attendees, averaging around 4 or 5. If I haven't missed any updates, then the official copy of CRRL's Sensory Time promotion includes the following:
While children with autism and other special needs have been and always will be welcome at our traditional Grow a Reader storytime classes, CRRL recognizes that some children, teens, and their families would prefer a class presented in a quieter environment, with lights lowered, distractions minimized, and a smaller class size (Central Rappahannock Regional Library, 2022).
Through all of this, I'm wondering: has there ever been any significant, foundational experiments with the framing or format of Sensory Time, outside of learning-in-the-moment-to-apply-next-time adjustments? Sensory Time is currently designed for a preschool level of development and conducted by CRRL staff, but would it be possible to add support for older children, or partner with educators at local school systems? The goal is to offer a lower level of stimulation, but would that be insufficient for children that seek out higher levels of sensory interaction with their environment (Shelton, 2014)?
I'm specifically thinking of a few things with the latter: Long's (2018) assertion that "the young user is [...] a citizen to be engaged than a passive patron to be served" (p. 234), about the successes that libraries with spaces designed for teens and with teens described by Ornstein and Reid (2022)—and especially a very vintage relic of early YouTube, Amanda Melissa Baggs' "In My Language." Baggs presents a montage of themselves in compulsive movements that are practically luxuriating in the tactile sensations of everyday objects, not something meant to be comprehensible or symbolic as they are "responding to the world around them as it responds to them" (Baggs, 2007). A lot of the kids I worked with in elementary school special needs classes were very much sensory seekers in this way, prone to move around and go back and forth in their attention, often without warning, especially when I or their teachers tried to keep them in the quiet, docile habits that schools prescribe. In that sense, the environment that CRRL tries to establish for Sensory Times doesn't exactly sound like an environment they'd thrive in. Returning to Ornstein and Reid, I have to wonder if special needs kids themselves have been asked about what they would like to see in Sensory Time programs. I'm asking a lot of hypotheticals in lieu of concrete guidance here, but if YS programmers wanted to ensure Sensory Time can meet said needs as comprehensively they can, I'd like to think treating them as self-determining citizens in an event made specifically for them would be one of the best adjustments one could make for the program's longevity.
References
Baggs, A. M. [silentmiaow]. (2007, January 14). In my language [Video]. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JnylM1hI2jc
Central Rappahannock Regional Library. (2022, November 28). Sensory Time returns. Retrieved September 12, 2024, from https://www.librarypoint.org/blogs/post/sensory-time/
Long, A. K. (2017). Youth services in public libraries: History, core services, challenges, and opportunities. In de la Peña McCook, K. & Bossaller, J. S. (Eds.), Introduction to public librarianship (pp. 229-256). American Library Association.
Ornstein, E., & Reid, P. H. (2022). ‘Talk to them like they’re people’: A cross-cultural comparison of teen-centred approaches in public library services. Journal of Librarianship and Information Science, 54(3), 451–468. https://doi.org/10.1177/09610006211020090
Shelton, A. (2014, November 3). Welcoming children with disabilities at your library. WebJunction. https://www.webjunction.org/news/webjunction/welcoming-children-with-disabilities-at-your-library.html