By Jennifer Burek Pierce
American Libraries Columnist
Assistant professor of library and information science, University of Iowa, Iowa City
youthmatters@ala.org
May 2008
Trusting in the Answers
Ready for patrons who have questions about everything
A child said, What is the grass?
fetching it to me with full hands;
How could I answer the child?
—Walt Whitman
Some librarians who didn’t expect to serve young people may find themselves answering questions from the child, rather than about Whitman. Younger users’ needs and wants often pose different service challenges than working with adult patrons, and those who staff a children’s desk after having trained to serve older individuals find themselves braving a new world of picture books, puzzles, and oversized stuffed animals that may be larger than some younger users.
One of my former students, Bethany Templeton, is augmenting her knowledge of theological reference sources, website construction, and book conservation practices by familiarizing herself with Grace the Glitter Fairy and Civil War resources for 9-year-olds. By day, Templeton is a library associate for access services at Wellesley (Mass.) College. Nights and weekends, though, find her at the children’s desk of suburban Boston’s Needham Public Library. While not a complete stranger to children’s services, this part of “stepping further into the realm of library practice,” as Templeton puts it, nonetheless provides her with a fresh perspective on youth services. Perhaps because of the novelty factor, her experiences and ideas suggest insights about preparing to work with children in libraries and the transition of new librarians into youth services.
“I have to say, I really love it,” Templeton said. “It’s made me think so much more about what I liked to read when I was the patron’s age. I’m trying to appreciate where they are coming from, especially the ones who don’t really want to read.”
Series mavens welcome
Readers’ advisory is central to her work at NPL, but played little role in her formal education. “I wish I had done more with reader’s advisory,” Templeton said, posing questions to me about how it ought to work, how much time to spend drawing out a young reader’s preferences, and what resources to use. Where she works, readers’ advisory revolves around the easy reading and more text-based titles, not the picture book collection, which “people treat as a browsing collection,” she said. “Picture books are definitely used, and used quite heavily, but I’ve never gotten a question about them.”
Instead, this user community demands familiarity with series books. The A to Z Mysteries, Cam Jansen mysteries, and Rainbow Magic books by British authors who use the pseudonym Daisy Meadows are among those that fly off the shelves at NPL. Because of the popularity of fantasy books, Templeton is busy reading up in that area to enhance her ability to respond to tweens who have finished series like Harry Potter or Bartimaeus. “I’ve just started a set of books called the Hungry City Chronicles,” she said.
Little units of meaning
Two courses that she says have contributed to her ability to work with children were reference and cataloging. The former offered “skills I didn’t realize would be important with younger users,” while the concepts involved in classifying books have helped her “break the shelves down into little units of meaning” and resolving the library’s mysteries for patrons who hadn’t yet understood that books are grouped by subject on library shelves.
A key difference between older users in collegiate settings and the youngsters Templeton encounters revolves around trust. College
students sometimes bring to reference transactions either skepticism about anyone’s ability to help them or library anxiety—and sometimes both. Her first encounter with a child at NPL was very different: “The patron completely trusted that I’d have an answer. It was kind of nice,” she said, noting that “it’s also a challenge to merit that trust.”