Library Learning Online: Library Services for Children, Ages 6-12

Course Objectives:

(Formerly SABLE)

Working in a school library or public library's youth services department is both a challenging and rewarding experience.

School and public libraries and library staff in particular have the potential to positively affect the lives of children and families.

A strong youth services department includes a staff of creative, fun-loving, motivated, and dedicated individuals who draw from a variety of backgrounds and seek new strategies and ideas in order to provide diverse materials and institute effective services to children, parents, teachers, adult caregivers, and child-serving agencies.

Staff should provide and recommend quality, interesting materials for emergent readers (pre-readers), and beginning readers as well as 'practicing' readers, consequently making reading enjoyable. This will ensure continued development and enjoyment, ultimately creating a lifelong connection to the library and to learning.

Staff should match quality reference and fiction materials, including computers and other media, with quality reference and reader's advisory service to school aged children, effectively supplementing school curricula and at the same time implanting a positive view of the library as a 'place to be.'

This course will either introduce or serve as a review to basic components of service to the school-aged:

Section 1. Developmental Information Section 2. Collection Development Section 3. Services and Programming Section 4. Outreach