YALSA Competencies for serving youth

YALSA has revised Young Adults Deserve the Best: Competencies for Serving Youth, a set of guidelines last published in 2004. The competencies were streamlined and updated to reflect changes in youth services over the past five years. They are available online at www.ala.org/yalsa/competencies and can be downloaded as a PDF.

YALSA developed the competencies for individuals and institutions, offering librarians guidelines for providing quality library service in collaboration with teenagers and giving libraries a framework to improve overall service capacities and increase public value to their respective communities.

The competencies are divided into seven areas: leadership and professionalism, knowledge of client group, communication, administration, knowledge of materials, access to information and services.