Youth Services and Public Libraries

Citation

Ferguson, S. (2008), "Youth Services and Public Libraries", Library Review, Vol. 57 No. 9, pp. 735-736. https://doi.org/10.1108/00242530810911860

There is no shortage of books and other resources on youth services and public libraries. Relatively recently, for instance, the American Library Association published Michael Sullivan's Fundamentals of Children's Services (2005) and Rosanne Cerny's Outstanding Library Service to Children (2006). Curiously, this new publication is written very much from a US perspective, despite being published in Britain and having the occasional international allusion (Higgins has taught library and information science outside the USA). It is aimed, according to the preface, at “library school students and practitioners and staff in public libraries”. The title may imply to some that the focus is services to teenagers but the term “youth” here covers children and young adults.

The book is divided into three parts (no chapters): “principles of library service”, “practices” and “professionalism”. “Principles” covers topics such as historical background, reading and information seeking, children's literature though social history, children's rights today and youth advocacy. Much of the part on practices deals with collections, including the various genres, and collection development issues, including multicultural selections. Other topics covered include specific services, such as services to youth with special needs and unattended (“latchkey”) children, and a two‐page section on budgets. “Professionalism” covers topics such as representation of cultural diversity, professional networking, censorship, marketing and promotional activities (not discussed under “practices”), evaluation of programs and services and research topics.

The principal competitor to this text is Michael Sullivan's book and, despite my initial excitement at seeing the Higgins book, it is Sullivan's text I will be recommending for my “serving children and youth services in public libraries” subject. Sullivan's is a well‐structured, wide‐ranging and highly articulate work. Higgins” on the other hand has little structure, other than the rough division into parts, and even this does not work at times. “Practices”, for instance, contains a section on “information behaviour”, which could more comfortably fit into the “principles” part, except that the text suddenly stops its thoughtful discussion of research into the information needs of urban teenagers and the place of information seeking in the development of teenage identity, and lurches into a discussion, covered elsewhere, of the role of the library in supporting “literacy development in the child”. The book is peppered with such non‐sequiturs, so much so that one must wonder about Chandos's editorial policy. The text meanders about and is not always entirely clear – a point that does not commend it to educators.

One of the book's strengths is Higgins” prolific reading, which is reflected in the many references to the literature, past and present, and the 20‐page reference list, which students and others may find useful. Another of the strengths is Higgins” knowledge of the field of collection development, although this also becomes a weakness, because collection‐related issues are over‐emphasized (29 pages out of the brief 123 pages of text) at the expense of other areas of interest. There is not the same depth of treatment that one finds in the more substantial Sullivan book, particularly when it comes to management of services to children and young adults. This is a very brief text, as for many others published by Chandos, another aspect that suggests limited value to librarianship students.

One would also expect a book intended as an educational resource to be better indexed. What passes for an index has five references to programming, none of which refers directly to the two sizeable sections on programming (14 pages in all). The book is illustrated sporadically with photographs but on the whole they are uninteresting and seem unconnected with the text. One might have expected some illustrations of dynamic and current public library programs and facilities for children and young adults – perhaps facilities shared by libraries and community youth services – but we are treated to such gems as “children waiting in line to check out books (c.1960s)” and “the author's daughter uses the computer at the Petal public library, MS”.

A more serious criticism is the lack of engagement with current ongoing issues such as how to get teenagers into the library (or the library's web‐space!). Higgins is strong on the traditional core values of public library service in the USA and elsewhere (nothing wrong with that) but there is little to tempt the actual practitioners to open the pages of this scholarly but dull text.

Does this book meet the need of its two intended markets? One suspects not – little of currency or interest for the practitioner, students will need something more substantial, better structured and more clearly presented, and there is better available. The publisher's hands‐off approach to book production has done author and reader no good at all.