Certainly through my limited research thus far, I have recognized the importance of both self and adult led empowerment for our youth, the importance for all youth service professionals to acknowledge the capacities of youth in advocating for their own needs. Seems to me that the best services respond to youth, don’t force their own agenda. The research methods of all of my four articles were mostly literature reviews.
In the articles I selected from the 1980’s (Flum, 1988) and (Hodges, 1988) both give examples of how library youth services need to delegate roles, network with all other local/community youth services, and above all else cater specifically to local youth needs.
Flum talks about the plight of youth in the 1980’s in away that is engaging and strongly progressively politically charged. Taking away some of the agency, or personal powers of the youth that Flum should be advocating for. She puts the bull’s-eye of the brunt of the burden and blame sharply on the shoulders of YA professions especially YA librarians, without giving enough blame to the young adults themselves in terms of their own advocacy. If adults must keep acting as gatekeepers, how will, how can that ever be considered full empowerment?
Hodges (1988) stresses that no single solitary library can be all things to all people at all times. No library can sufficiently fulfill equanimity of satisfaction even to any one particular customer base, such as young adults or children. No library is perfect, Can any library ever possibly be good enough to all people given strict human and budget limitations? According to Hodges the lack of perfection means, the role of decision making for young adults must be “as meaningful for their needs as can be achieved.” (p. 112)
The articles we read in this weeks reading talk about how to best make those decisions. One example being the Participant Action Research (PAR) method discussed in Raby’s 2007 article in Best’s book. PAR is a research method in qich the researcher engages with the youth being impacted by the services on equal footing as supposed to doing research on them, it is a collaborative research approach. Allowing the youth to feel and be as fully capable and able to construct and use their own thoughts producing meaningful and perhaps even practical actions and thoughts, and produce such awareness that is best made through, as Raby quotes Freire, “self inquiry and reflection.” (pg. 53) The idea is to create spaces and dialogues that permit free expression and careful reflection with these shared ideas, the researcher gains information and the youth can be at least slightly empowered as a result of the research.
My articles from the 1990’s also spoke of how the voices of children and youth need to be eternally empowered by youth and children librarians.
Walter’s 1997 article discussed the need for policies and reforms in the area of digital libraries accessibility to children and youth and having policies that enable the libraries to provide better service.
In Hannigan there is a focus on the feminist perspective on six women and their contributions to young adult services in public libraries.
As sociology was my undergrad major I really enjoyed the Dimitradis (2008) chapters. These chapters were great reviews for some of the foundational ideas that started sociology as a legitimate academic avenue. I enjoyed a lot of the vocabulary and the ideas of urban culture and I now question whether I live in an urban place or a suburban space.
I think that what I learned from these articles and chapters will remind me to work with the people I serve and not keep myself in a place of authority, I will do this to best as I am able at least to the extent this is possible.
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