Youth Librarians: Access Builders in a Digital Era

• In Event: Restorying Young Adult Literature to Reconstruct Educational Possibility in Classrooms and Beyond

Abstract

Today’s political climate that has seen significant challenges to YAL in schools exacerbate the already fraught climate around media for children and teens, both in books and digital technology. Nesting within this growing tension is this country’s propensity towards devaluing and eliminating school librarians and accessible school libraries in K-12 schools. School library programs across the country have been among the first cut when budgets get tight. The loss of school library programs in rural and urban school districts (Ahlfeld, 2019; Carlton, 2016; Inklebarger, 2019) can be a major contributor to the inequity and to on-going narratives of the “digital divide” (Reich & Ito, 2017). Coalition and partnerships between teachers and librarians within the school building are crucial to supporting the creative, educational, and developmental needs of youth teachers encounter. Additionally, librarians have carved out spaces that reach beyond schools online to spark major movements that work against school boards and far right politicians’ attempts to ban books and stifle conversations around diversity and inclusivity. By far, the most banned books of the year featured LGBTQ+ and characters of color, and librarians online, like Cecily Lewis, have started initiatives like #ReadWoke (Lewis, 2017) to share resources and titles address the ongoing political violence against Black and trans bodies, over-policing, and political laws that have repealed DACA, seen children in cages at the border, and have used anti-Islamic, xenophobic rhetoric to support laws that ban people from immigrating to the U.S. This presentation will highlight the work of those libraries working within and beyond the school building, in person and online, seeking to support all youth and their access to digital and print materials.

Author

• Latrice Ferguson, University of Pennsylvania