Following the practical programs laid out here, young adult librarians in public libraries, school librarians, and adult and young adult services staff can easily explore many diverse cultures.

As high school enrollment continues to rise, the need for effective librarianship serving young adults is greater than ever before. "Young Adults Deserve the Best: Competencies for Librarians Serving Youth,” developed by Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA), is a document outlining areas of focus for providing quality library service in collaboration with teenagers. In this book, Sarah Flowers identifies and expands on these competency areas. This useful work includes Anecdotes and success stories from the field Guidelines which can be used to create evaluation instruments, determine staffing needs, and develop job descriptions Additional professional resources following each chapter that will help librarians turn theory into practiceThe first book to thoroughly expand on this important document, Young Adults Deserve the Best is a key foundational tool not only for librarians but also for young adult specialists, youth advocacy professionals, and school administrators.

Hosting a Library Mystery contains five example mystery scripts, each targeted to a different audience, but all original, expertly created, and thoroughly researched. These scripts serve as an excellent starting point for you to acquaint users with a wide variety of your library services.

Need to amp up teen services, but you’re short on time or not sure where to start? Teen Services 101: A Practical Guide for Busy Library Staff provides useful information that will help staff put together a basic teen services program with minimal time and hassle. The author, Megan Fink, along with contributions from Maria Kramer, provides practical tips and instructions on how to build core teen services into the overall library program. Whether you’re a new teen services librarian, or staff in a one person library, this how-to guide on teen services can help you effectively serve teen patrons. Let’s face it, teens are sometimes overlooked by libraries when it comes to services and programs. However, there are over 42 million teens in the US, which makes them a sizeable and important demographic to serve. Many of today’s teens are struggling. More are living in poverty than before and nearly 7,000 teens drop out of high school per day. By setting aside some time to increase your library’s focus on teens, you will be providing a vital service and positioning your library as an indispensable part of the community. The resources and information in this book can help you achieve that.

Connecting teens to books they’ll truly enjoy is the aim of every young adult librarian, and the completely revamped guide Outstanding Books for the College Bound will give teen services staff the leg up they need to make it happen. Listing nearly 200 books deemed outstanding for the college bound by the Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA), this indispensable resource Examines how the previous lists in the series were developed, and explains the book’s new layout Features engaging, helpful book descriptions useful for readers’ advisory Offers programming tips and other ideas for ways the lists can be used at schools and public libraries Includes indexes searchable by topic, year, title, and authorMore than simply a vital collection development tool, this book can help librarians help young adults grow into the kind of independent readers and thinkers who will flourish at college.

In this work, Sullivan digs deeper, melding his own experiences as an activist with perspectives gleaned from other industry experts to help you learn about the books that boys love to read, uncover the signs that point to the reading gap, find creative programming ideas to match boys' interests, and more.

Asian populations are among some of the fastest growing cultural groups in the US. While books on serving other target groups in libraries have been published (e.g., disabled, Latino, seniors, etc.), few books on serving library users of Asian heritage have been written. Thus the timely need for this book. Rather than a generalized overview of Asians as a whole, this book has 24 separate chapters—each on 24 specific Asian countries/cultures of East, Southeast, and South Asia—with a wealth of resources for understanding, interacting with, outreaching to, and serving library users of each culture. Resources include cultural guides (both print and online), language helps (with sample library vocabulary), Asian booksellers, nationwide cultural groups, professional literature, and more. Resources and suggestions are given for all three types of libraries—public, school, and academic—making this book valuable for all librarians. The demographics of each Asian culture (numbers and distribution)—plus history of immigration and international student enrollment—is also featured. As a bonus, each chapter spotlights a US public, school, and academic library providing model outreach to Asian library users. Additionally, this book provides a detailed description and analysis of libraries in each of the 24 Asian countries. The history, development, facilities, conditions, technology, classification systems, and more—of public, school, and academic libraries—are all discussed, with detailed documentation. Country conditions influencing libraries and library use are also described: literacy levels, reading cultures, languages and writing systems, educational systems, and more. Based on the author’s 15 years of research and travels to Asia, this work is a must-have for all librarians.