Kids and Libraries: Selections from Emergency Librarian

Ellen Pilon is a library assistant in the Patrick Power Library at Saint
Mary’s University in Halifax.

This is a collection of 61 articles selected from the periodical Emergency Librarian (edited by the Haycocks), which focuses on library services for children and young adults in schools and public libraries. The articles are organized into three sections: Professional Roles and Responsibilities, Services and Materials for Young People, and Program Advocacy. Within the first section are two sub-groups: The School Librarian and The Children’s/Young Adult Librarian. One article outlines areas of competence for school librarians, another justifies the continued existence of school libraries, another examines research on library services for children and young adults. The second section is longest, with seven popular categories: Services and Materials for Young People, Canadian Books and Magazines, Storytelling, Services for the Disabled, Youth and the Law, Microcomputers, and Intellectual Freedom. Many of these articles are valuable: hints on how to give services for the blind, tips on successful story hours, descriptions of the Oakville Public Library’s computer program, etc. Inevitably some articles in this section are biased: the description of homosexual books for libraries is narrow and one-sided; the articles on censorship all advise its demise for children’s and young adult books, none advocate its continuance. Program advocacy articles stress organization and public relations.

“Since 1979 our small magazine [which began in 1973] has quadrupled its circulation such that many newer subscribers and other interested professionals did not have the opportunity to read fine articles from the past and do not have easy access to back issues.” Presumably this is the book’s raison d’être. Those “fine articles of the past” are really very recent: most of them are from 1980-1983. The editors say they have not included bibliographies, review columns, or book lists, but an annotated bibliography of young adult homosexual literature nonetheless appears. Date of an article’s publication is included in the table of contents but not with the article itself, an irritating omission. The myriad of different type faces, some too faint, others too bold, makes the book rather messy. In their brief introduction the Haycocks are obviously promoting Emergency Librarian as they describe the considerably upgraded volume 11. Whatever its shortcomings, the book does offer a good overview of current issues in children’s/young adult libraries; many of the 51 contributors are noted librarians whose words are well worth perusing, especially for the novice and the stale.