Reader’s Roundup from page 40 cludes faster growing occupations; earning potential of careers that don’t require a four-year degree; currently available certificate programs; reasons teens are choosing vocational programs; and types of vocational programs available in the United States. Through their experiences planning programming in their own public libraries, the authors provide a plethora of programming ideas and resources for library staff to use. Programs they created and executed include a “Meet a Professional” Workshop Series; Internships at the Library; a Trade School Fair; and “Teaching to a Career” in the Library. Additionally, the authors write about the importance of partnering with other organizations and schools in their communities to offer programming together. Wyckoff and Harris identify what draws teens into their programming, what doesn’t, and what helps their teen patrons return. Food, giveaways, competitions, hands-on activities and offering group presentations are at the top of their list for successful programming. They not only elicit teen feedback to aid in planning their programs, it was also exciting to read that they encourage their teen patrons to create, market, and facilitate career workshops at their own community library. Even if you have not engaged your community as such, it is useful to see how librarians serving two different communities have done so. The last two chapters are dedicated to the importance of ongoing evaluation
of library programming as well as collection development tools to aid library staff in the creation of that programming. The authors include specific ways of measuring the impact the programs have on their communities. They offer concrete ways of collecting community feedback and survey data. The collection development chapter lists specific book titles that aid both library staff in providing teen services and program planning but also titles meant for teens who need guidance and advice in pursuing a path after high school. All of the books listed as resources have been written within the last ten years, most within the last five years. Wyckoff and Harris identified a need among their teen patrons and their parents for vocational career planning assistance at the public library. In particular, they became aware of their teen patrons who were not interested in attending a traditional 4-year college after high school. They recognized that high school counselors cannot possibly keep up with helping an entire school population of students and their varied needs when it comes to career and education planning. The public library can fill this gap by providing relevant programming to their teen users. By sharing the successful and not-so-successful programming executed by the authors over the years at their public libraries, they have highlighted the fact that public library staff can play a key role in helping teens figure out what they want to do after high school. ATG Reviewer Rating: I need this available somewhere in my shared network. (I probably do not need this book, but it would be nice to get it within three to five days via my network catalog.)
Collecting to the Core — A Case Study in Creating a New Linguistics List by Adam Siegel (Researcher Services Librarian, University of California, Davis; Linguistics Subject Editor, Resources for College Libraries) <apsiegel@ucdavis.edu> Column Editor: Anne Doherty (Resources for College Libraries Project Editor, CHOICE/ACRL) <adoherty@ala-choice.org> Column Editor’s Note: The “Collecting to the Core” column highlights monographic works that are essential to the academic library within a particular discipline, inspired by the Resources for College Libraries bibliography (online at http://www.rclweb.net). In each essay, subject specialists introduce and explain the classic titles and topics that continue to remain relevant to the undergraduate curriculum and library collection. Disciplinary trends may shift, but some classics never go out of style. — AD
C
reating a new subject bibliography for Resources for College Libraries (RCL) is both an honor and an opportunity to assess (or reassess)
one’s field, and one’s relationship to it. Title lists, because they are created with a specific audience in mind, are selective by nature, and hence evaluative. How to select the scholarly works that both serve the needs of contemporary libraries (and their users) and provide a bibliographic history of a discipline in six hundred titles (or less) is a challenge. The first task I faced when developing a new title list in Linguistics for RCL was how to review the existing subject literature. I elected to analyze the linguistics holdings of a sizable sample of American and Canadian college libraries to determine by consensus, as core works should (in the main) be represented in the holdings of most college libraries. My initial
Against the Grain / December 2020 - January 2021
searches included Library of Congress call number ranges and subject headings, including LC call number ranges P-PN, E, and G and Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH) such as “Linguistics,” “Phonetics,” “Semantics,” Grammars,” etc. During this first pass, I exported the bibliographic records and populated a spreadsheet. Once I had de-duplicated (noting which titles were most widely held), around 4,000 titles remained. Because I had exported relatively complete MARC records, I was able to sort and filter by format (for instance, journals, sorted by ISSN, were moved to a separate sheet since RCL focuses primarily on monographs). continued on page 42
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