Reference Sources and Services for Youth, by Meghan Harper

Reference Sources and Services for Youth. By Meghan Harper. New York: Neal-Schuman Publishers, 2011. 307 pages. Paperback. ISBN 9781555706418.

Reference Sources and Services for Youth is an excellent resource for librarians who are responsible for providing reference services for children from pre-Kindergarten through grade 12 in both school and public library settings. Its author, Meghan Harper, is a former school library media specialist who has gone on to become a professor in the School of Library and Information Science at Kent State University. Widely published in this field, she is highly qualified to write on this topic.

Organized into 10 chapters, the first five chapters focus on providing reference service to children and young adults. The first chapter provides a history of reference service directed at youth, and outlines a timeline of key historical events and standards development by a number of professional associations. Chapter 2 describes in great detail the need to provide reference service at the developmentally appropriate level, based on the age of the child. In Chapter 3 Harper addresses the issues that librarians face when working with children with disabilities. Communication skills are the topic of chapter 4, with a focus on the use of both open and closed questions during a reference interview. Chapter 5 is devoted to a lengthy discussion of information literacy, including descriptions of information literacy standards published by a number of organizations such as the American Association of School Librarians, the Association for College and Research Librarians, and the Young Adult Library Services Association.

With chapter 6 Harper turns her attention to reference sources for youth, with in-depth discussions of collection analysis and planning. She delves into online reference sources in chapter 7 and government publications in chapter 8. Finally, the marketing and management of reference services are thoroughly discussed in the last two chapters.

Overall, this is a resource that young adult and school librarians will want to have in their professional libraries. It is a thorough, well-written, and useful resource. It includes lengthy references at the end of each chapter, an index of reference sources as well as a subject index, a glossary, and a list of common abbreviations. It also includes a list of recommended core reference materials based on age and grade level. Finally, each chapter includes exercises and scenarios for discussion that would make this book ideal for use in a library and information science classroom.