Hello again!
As a reminder from last week, the theme of this year is Striving for Equity using YALSA’s Teen Services Competencies for Library Staff.
So, what are these Competencies, and how did they come about? If you have seen the one-page snapshot below either in print, on Twitter, or elsewhere, you’ve come to realize that there are ten components of the Teen Services Competencies (TSC). There are also two much more in-depth versions of the TSC, which are highly recommended. The “full” version, along with expounding on the TSC themselves, gives a great understanding of the history and background of the TSC. The “mid-sized” version explains in clear bullet points the three levels of service: Developing, Practicing, and Transforming. Having a baseline understanding of the TSC goes a long way to help you provide excellent service to teens in your institution and community.
After the development and implementation of the watershed project report “The Future of Library Services for and with Teens: A Call to Action” in 2014, it quickly became clear that YALSA’s previous edition of teen services competencies, published in 2010, needed updating. This overhaul resulted in the TSC that were released in late 2017.
In the development of this edition of the TSC, a number of documents were reviewed to look for an appropriate model. Those of the National Afterschool Association were selected as a framework, as these “allowed YALSA to create a document that puts teens first and communicates to library staff the need to work with teens, their families, and their communities to provide high-quality library services.” As promised, we will further discuss the teens first concept as the year goes on. We will also look at the various levels of the Competencies, and where members and non-members can receive more information about each of them.
In the coming weeks, we will also tackle that other important element of this year’s theme: Equity. We will investigate how we can define it, what it means today, and the myriad ways it relates to the Teen Services Competencies.
Todd Krueger, YALSA President 2019-2020
