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.
