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Serving Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Questioning Teens: A How-To-Do-It Manual for Librarians
In our shared efforts to serve every member of our YA community, this new title is an important addition to your professional collection. This innovative guide will help you make informed collection, service, and programming decisions about materials for the growing lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and questioning (LGBTQ) YA population. The authors provide an overview of LGBTQ literature, address concerns for serving these patrons, and help guide you and your colleagues through the benefits and challenges of collecting materials. This breakthrough new publication An A-Z annotated guide to 50+ fiction, non-fiction, and multimedia works 30+ ready-to-use programming ideas and booktalks that will help you welcome and provide a more inclusive environment for all teens Tips and suggestions for handling challenging situations placement of books, patron privacy, handling parents questions, and more
267 pages, Paperback
Published January 29, 2007
29 people want to read
About the author
Hillias J. Martin Jr.
2ÌýbooksHillias "Jack" Martin began working in libraries at the age of 13 when his mom volunteered him to work for his local public library in Cornelia, Georgia. Since then he has worked in Athens, Georgia, and in Providence, Rhode Island, leading him to his current position as assistant director for public programs and lifelong learning for children, teens, and families at the New York Public Library. He's an adjunct professor at Queens College and Pratt Institute, and is the coauthor of Serving Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Questioning Teens: A How-To-Do-It Manual for Libraries. He lives on the Upper East Side of Manhattan with his husband and two bad cats.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
November 9, 2017
Written by a gay couple who are also librarians really does help with this subject matter.
Though the books, films, and non-fiction, almost all of which I have read or knew about, are outdated.
However, the way to go about making your library LGBTQ friendly depends entirely on your community and how your library or system approaches LGBTQ. I don't think that it should be political negative towards the people who support the library since the LGBTQ community uses the library resources just as any straight, African-American, Asian-American, Jewish, Muslim, Homeless, or Senior customer.
The authors tread carefully knowing that the general populace while either indifferent, against, or in favor of LGBTQ community, may react differently. So they created a 4-step approach called Red Light, Green Light. Red Light uses the minimum of marketing resources, collection development, displays, even not including characters or even books that are LGBTQ in book groups. Yellow Light takes it a step further, more about the marketing and inclusion part. Green goes the whole way, even up to having a G.S.A. (Gay Straight Alliance) and meetings for parents with LGBTQ youth or vice versa.
However, many of the programs are passive or are interactive displays, and less in-depth. I had heard of many of them before I picked up this book, which is a good sign, because that means that libraries are on their way to becoming more unbiased (even though as libraries we respect intellectual freedom.)
The big take away from this book was the reader's advisory (using intellectual freedom) and the slow, easing way to introduce this to your library.
It is outdated based on how we handle politics, opinions and legalities, but it is still carefully tread ground, which I do feel is unfortunate, because, unless you are a privately funded library or school, there are people in your community who are either out and identify as such, are closeted and scared seeking a safe space, or who are unsure and wanting to know more (whether parents/family members or the youth in question) whose tax dollars go to fund the public library too. This is something I feel very strongly about...just as much as cultural and racial diversity.
But I'm glad that this book exists. It will make changes. These authors were probably some of the first to write how best for a librarian to take the initial steps to being more inclusive.
Though the books, films, and non-fiction, almost all of which I have read or knew about, are outdated.
However, the way to go about making your library LGBTQ friendly depends entirely on your community and how your library or system approaches LGBTQ. I don't think that it should be political negative towards the people who support the library since the LGBTQ community uses the library resources just as any straight, African-American, Asian-American, Jewish, Muslim, Homeless, or Senior customer.
The authors tread carefully knowing that the general populace while either indifferent, against, or in favor of LGBTQ community, may react differently. So they created a 4-step approach called Red Light, Green Light. Red Light uses the minimum of marketing resources, collection development, displays, even not including characters or even books that are LGBTQ in book groups. Yellow Light takes it a step further, more about the marketing and inclusion part. Green goes the whole way, even up to having a G.S.A. (Gay Straight Alliance) and meetings for parents with LGBTQ youth or vice versa.
However, many of the programs are passive or are interactive displays, and less in-depth. I had heard of many of them before I picked up this book, which is a good sign, because that means that libraries are on their way to becoming more unbiased (even though as libraries we respect intellectual freedom.)
The big take away from this book was the reader's advisory (using intellectual freedom) and the slow, easing way to introduce this to your library.
It is outdated based on how we handle politics, opinions and legalities, but it is still carefully tread ground, which I do feel is unfortunate, because, unless you are a privately funded library or school, there are people in your community who are either out and identify as such, are closeted and scared seeking a safe space, or who are unsure and wanting to know more (whether parents/family members or the youth in question) whose tax dollars go to fund the public library too. This is something I feel very strongly about...just as much as cultural and racial diversity.
But I'm glad that this book exists. It will make changes. These authors were probably some of the first to write how best for a librarian to take the initial steps to being more inclusive.
November 18, 2008
I interloaned this and had to return it before I could finish the whole thing, but I'll be buying it for my professional reference collection next year. Excellent sourcebook on making sure that LGBTQ teens are not left out of the collections/marketing/programs at your library. If I did everything in this book, it might be overwhelming, but I am certainly inspired to do more. Features a good list of questions to ask of your library's services to teens.
March 31, 2017
A little textbook-y and less woke, but still a fine place for someone to start exploring queer book issues. Importantly, it's not condescending about teenagers. You'll probably want this one more if you're in some kind of advisory role for teens (in a library or otherwise), not so much for general use or for book recs since you can get queer YA recs anywhere.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
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