Project READY: Re-imagining equity and access for diverse youth.

To, Nhi.

 

Project READY. (n.d.). Project READY:  Reimagining equity and access for diverse 

youth. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. 

https://ready.web.unc.edu/about-us/ 

 

Summary: Project READY, which stands for Reimagining Equity and Access for Diverse Youth, 

is a free online professional development curriculum with the aims of promoting racial 

equity in libraries and educational settings. Developed by a group of educators and library

staff from the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, Project READY offers modules

on understanding racism, building cultural competence, and transforming library services, 

programming, and practices to support diverse youth. 

 

Evaluation: This project is a valuable resource for librarians as this could provide useful

information regarding topics of racial equity that may be lacking in their understanding. 

Provided that this is a free course, I believe Project READY should be an option that all 

libraries can look to add into their training or professional development for their staff 

members. The curriculum is comprehensive, leaving anyone who is able to complete the 

course fully to have a wealth of knowledge afterwards. I found this source to be incredible

cool as it is free and it is also online. Accessibility was definitely a consideration when 

creating this toolkit.

Review of: Teens, Technology, and Libraries

by Lindsay Lamar Schweizer

Agosto, D. E., Magee, R. M. Dickard, M., & Forte, A. (2016). Teens, technology, and libraries: An uncertain relationship. Library Quarterly: Information, Community, Policy, 86(3), 248-269.


This paper aims to look at how public and school libraries are meeting the information needs of teenagers. While the authors thought there had been research into how teenagers use technology, there hadn't been sufficient research on where school and public libraries fit into that equation.

Because this paper was published in 2016, I felt like it had relevant information for today. In the past, I have looked at information on the digital divide, and there are certainly portions of our population who have less access to computers and other technology. But I found it noteworthy that this article cited research from 2013 that indicates that 93% of teens have a computer at home, 78% of teens have a cell phone, and 37% of them are smart phones (Agosto, Magee, Dickard, and Forte, 2016, p. 248). So while it is still a valid idea that teens may need to use a library for its technology, it may not be the main reason, and it may shift students' perception of what they need from a library.

The authors did surveys and interviews with students at a high school. This particular paper focused on the in-depth interviews, as this was the form in which student perception of libraries was measured. Not surprisingly, most students in the study still equate libraries with books (Agosto et al., 2016, p. 255). About 40% of the students viewed libraries as obsolete, and do not connect technology with libraries, but rather in competition with what is easily available to them through the Internet (Agosto et al., 2016, p. 257). In fact, "these students also tended to view technology as easier and quicker to use than libraries. As one of the boys explained: 'Because everyone is so tech-based, it is kind of pointless to go into the library anymore' (age 17)" (Agosto et al., 2016, p. 258).

However, students were also asked about the reasons that they use a library. Library use seemed to focus around social opportunities, and use for leisure reading and leisure music. One student talked about being dragged to the library by a friend because he needed to check out something but had fines on his card so wanted to use hers. When they got there, they discovered a game night activity that was going on. They had so much fun that they started regularly attending it (Agosto et al., 2016, p. 258-259). Another student needed a couple books from her public library because they weren't in her school library, and rediscovered how great a space it was to work (Agosoto et al., 2016, p. 259).

Of important note, among the teens in the study, only 8% used the library for its technology (and one cited that it was because of technology malfunction at home, rather than no technology ever) (Agosto, et al., 2016, p. 259). The paper emphasized that the perceptions of libraries are outdated for teens, and some effort needs to be made to rebrand them for teens as a social space that can also be a quiet place to work as well.

Towards the end of the paper, the authors point out:

Just because the teens in this study tended to be infrequent library users does not mean that they were infrequent information users or infrequent information searchers.... For students with high levels of technology access, such as those in our study, librarians acting as technology educators to teach teens sophisticated information searching and resource evaluation and how to arm their phones or computers with available resources would probably be more useful than positioning libraries as technology access points. Thus, this work suggests an additional shift from the traditional focus on librarians as resource providers to librarians as information educators. (Agosto et al., 2016, p. 263)

I thought the insight of teaching teens how to access resources on their own devices was a powerful observation. If more and more people are walking around with a computer in their pocket, how can libraries arm them with what they need when both in the library walls and at home? Maybe libraries become less and less of a physical technology access point, but become a virtual one as well. And then maybe we look at the different ways that the physical space can meet other needs as well.

Diverse population, diverse collection? Youth collections in the United States

Kimura, Camden

Williams, V. K., & Deyoe, N. (2014). Diverse population, diverse collection? Youth collections in the United States. Technical Services Quarterly, 31, 97-121. doi:10.1080/07317131.2014.875373

Summary: In this article, Williams and Deyoe present a study of diverse titles in youth literature (ages 0-18) in 5,002 public, academic, and school libraries. Their research consisted of building three lists of books with ethnic/racial minority characters, characters with disabilities, and LGBTQ characters. All the books on the lists were published between 2000 and 2009, had positive reviews or been recommended, and had been vetted for “cultural authenticity and avoidance of stereotypes” (Williams & Deyoe, 2014, p. 104). They then searched OCLC for libraries’ collections that contained books from the checklists.  Among other findings, they found that more than one-third of libraries spending over $100,000 per year on materials did not meet Williams and Deyoe’s minimum level for titles on the racial/ethnic minority and disability checklists and half did not meet the minimum level for LGBTQ titles (in fact, 15% of all libraries surveyed did not have any titles from the LGBTQ checklist.) Williams and Deyoe recommend that librarians assess their youth literature collections for diverse representation, paying particular attention to books with LGBTQ characters as these books seem to be the most under-represented.

Evaluation: Williams and Deyoe present an important study of diverse literature in youth collections. However, it is only a beginning; I think that this study serves as a very good starting point for further research into the area of diverse youth literature in libraries. The data are interesting and it is disheartening to read that there are so many libraries with materials budgets of over $100,000 that don’t meet the minimum level Williams and Deyoe set for good representation. I take issue, however, with their decision to only include books that had good reviews or were on recommendation lists. While I absolutely think that including books that have been vetted for cultural authenticity is necessary, I do wonder how many books did not make the cut simply because they had not been reviewed well. Their checklists of books were not terribly long, all things considered; the race/ethnicity checklist had 964 titles, the disability checklist had 334, and the LGBTQ checklist had 116 titles. Surely there were, for example, more than 116 titles with LGBTQ characters with suitable cultural authenticity published between 2000-2009, including books that hadn’t been reviewed well or recommended. I assume that Williams and Deyoe did not have the page space to fully detail their selection process but I am curious to know why they chose to use books that had only been reviewed well or recommended. (I know that there is probably a lot of overlap between well-reviewed books and books that have vetted for good portrayals of minority characters and this could be the reason why they only chose well-reviewed books.)

In sum, this is a good article with interesting data, but it is only the beginning of what is possible for studies on diverse youth literature in libraries.

Edited to Add: I've just discovered that a review of this article has already been posted on the blog. I'm going to leave my review up for anyone who is interested, but I won't count the article as part of my 300 pages. My apologies for double-posting and I am very sorry that I did not see this article had already been reviewed before submitting my own.