Young Adult Library Services: Challenges and Opportunities

Finally, a single volume that comprehensively introduces and addresses the most pressing issues and opportunities in young adult (teen) library services. Perpetually in the shadow of service to children, and historically riven by fractious relationships between public and school libraries, young adult services continue to suffer inadequacies and inequities of all kinds. Consequently, this area of specialization remains without the capacity to build the institutional, political, cultural, or professional influence needed to grow and develop beyond ritual and repetition. Young Adult Services: Challenges and Opportunities (COYAS) begins to address these inequities by preparing professionals. In COYAS, LIS youth services instructors, especially those in the United States and Canada, will find a single, broad, and diverse engagement with scholars and acknowledged experts on the most pressing issues confronting YA services today. Students at both graduate and undergraduate levels will benefit from the field-tested topics delivered through accessible treatments. Practicing YA (and youth) librarians will appreciate the support and evidence-based analysis they likely found lacking in their MLIS programs. Earnest youth advocates will value the pursuit of issues beyond cliché and perpetual “crash course” entry-level conversations. In addition, instructors and students will both value the brevity of concisely focused chapters, sectional introductions, as well as the study guide questions that conclude each chapter. Content areas include history and critical engagement with foundational concepts in YA services, current practices regarding challenges and opportunities, as well as forward leaning issues for future development of the field. COYAS will ultimately empower librarians in delivering professional-grade information services to improve the quality of young people’s experience in this important cultural institution.

Anthony Bernier, PhD, is professor at the nation’s largest library school (California’s San Jose State University School of Information) where he teaches the introduction to YA services course each term and an annual course in youth services research methods. As a critical youth studies scholar, his primary field of research explores the administration of equitable library services with YAs. Dr. Bernier published a regular column in Voice of Youth Advocates (“YA Strike Zone” between 2013-2019) in addition to appearing in many top scholarly journals. His most recent publications include Transforming Young Adult Services, Second Edition, and “Isn’t it time for youth services instruction to grow up? Superstition or scholarship. He appeared as a featured panelist for YALSA’s Presidential Task Force at the 2022 annual ALA conference. Awarded two National Leadership Grants from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), Dr. Bernier has also received grants from the American Library Association (ALA) and the Association for Library and Information Sciences Education (ALISE). The SJSU iSchool has awarded him Distinguished Service, Outstanding Professor, and Outstanding Researcher Awards, and he has served as chair of the iSchool’s Youth Services Program Advisory Committee since 2016. He also served a four-year presidential appointment to the ALA Committee on Accreditation and has chaired several national professional and academic associations (including two elected terms as ALA’s Library History Round Table chair). Prior to joining the SJSU faculty he served as a practicing YA Specialist Librarian and administrator for 14 years, designing the space and service plan for the first purpose-built YA library space (Los Angeles Public Library’s acclaimed TeenS’cape Department). He subsequently served as the first Director of YA Services for the Oakland Public Library and regularly consults with architecture firms on designing YA library spaces. Dr. Bernier earned his MLIS from the University of California, Berkeley, and a doctorate from U.C. Irvine, examining changing notions of public space in twentieth-century America.

Shari Lee, PhD, is associate professor at St. John’s University, Division of Library and Information Science (DLIS). She received her PhD from the University of California, Los Angeles in 2009. Dr. Lee also holds an MLS with a concentration in Youth Services as well as an Advanced Certificate in School Library Media. Her research considers the changing notions and physical structures of the public library as place and space. She is primarily concerned with how architecture and design elements affect human behavior and how this applies to the public library setting – specifically teen spaces. This was the focus of her dissertation, Teen Space: Designed for Whom? for which she received the 2011 Eugene Garfield/ALISE Doctoral Dissertation Award. This notion of social control in the built environment was further explored for its utility in creating authentic teen spaces in a course Dr. Lee designed and currently teaches at SJU. Dr. Lee has been the Youth Services Program Advisor at DLIS since September 2010, and was the School Library Media (SLM) Program Advisor from 2011 until the program was discontinued in 2017. As Convener of department’s Youth Services Advisory Group since 2011, she is responsible for liaising with youth services practitioners, library directors, and other stakeholders, who meet twice per year semester to provide a real-world perspective on the program. She has been a member of the ALISE Youth Services SIG since 2011. In 2015, Dr. Lee won the Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA) Writing Award for best article in The Journal of Research on Libraries and Young Adults (JRLYA), deemed required reading in many youth services courses across the nation. In addition to this course, Dr. Lee teaches seven other courses on teens and youth services. She has also reviewed manuscripts on youth services for the Journal of Research on Libraries & Young Adults, InterActions: UCLA Journal of Education & Information Studies, and the Encyclopedia of Library and Information Sciences, 3rd Ed.