{"id":160776,"date":"2023-01-17T18:27:12","date_gmt":"2023-01-17T18:27:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.youthfacts.org\/?p=160776"},"modified":"2023-01-17T18:27:46","modified_gmt":"2023-01-17T18:27:46","slug":"160776","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.youthfacts.org\/?p=160776","title":{"rendered":"Why do libraries continue to strike out with young people?"},"content":{"rendered":"

 <\/p>\n

Why do libraries continue to strike out with young people?<\/h1>\n

Anthony Bernier | January 2023<\/p>\n

The answer to the question why libraries strike out with young people is simple: libraries envision young\u00a0people merely as information consumers, and many still believe that libraries are about books.<\/p>\n

And we wonder why young people make libraries the butt of jokes.<\/p>\n

When libraries privilege only certain materials and experiences over young peoples\u2019 own ways of being, we\u00a0must recognize that institutional behaviors, institutional priorities, and institutional agendas keep these\u00a0institutions in severely compromised positions.<\/p>\n

In acknowledging library visions of youth only as information consumers, for instance, youth allies should\u00a0ask the whereabouts of school newspaper collections. Where the playbills and programs of annual school plays,\u00a0sporting events, or extra-mural competitions? Where the archival collections of youth-created, podcasts, murals,\u00a0or zines? Where the manuscripts of valedictorian speeches or debate champions\u2026 or youth poets, filmmakers,\u00a0journalists, and authors?<\/p>\n

Increasingly, and to unprecedented degrees, young people enact their own literacy practices through\u00a0producing what I call \u201cfugitive literacies.\u201d Youth bend and shape new and ever-cheaper communications\u00a0affordances and skills into literary vocal cords of their own.<\/p>\n

Yet, despite all the ethical huffing and puffing librarianship does about commitments to \u201cintellectual\u00a0freedom\u201d and \u201cinformation access\u201d libraries institutionally ignore youth-produced literacy enactments.<\/p>\n

Youth produce these cultural contributions not through national publishing houses, but locally in small lots,\u00a0often in one-time offerings, non-sequential, or non-serial, and often fleeting productions. The library world\u2019s\u00a0dismissive term for this cultural production is \u201cephemera,\u201d a synonym for not-very-valuable; a synonym for\u00a0\u201cwe don\u2019t care about this stuff.\u201d<\/p>\n

Implicitly, it means that we don\u2019t care about those who produce it, either.<\/p>\n

I refer to the manifestations of these new literary vocal cords as \u201csubversive materials that engage fugitive\u00a0literacies.\u201d I invoke such normally pejorative terms as \u201csubversive\u201d and \u201cfugitive\u201d to reflect how our\u00a0institutions marginalize them.<\/p>\n

One highly unusual example of a cultural institution taking youth culture seriously appears at Harvard\u00a0University\u2019s Hiphop Archive. Although focused on Hiphop itself, rather than on its creators, the collection\u00a0inherently acknowledges the young voices who, since the 1970s, created an artform rivaling jazz as an\u00a0American contribution to global culture.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

\u201cMission: The Hiphop Archive and Research Institute\u2019s mission is to facilitate and encourage the pursuit of knowledge, art, culture, and responsible leadership through Hiphop.\u201d<\/p><\/div>\n

Fugitive literacies, by nature, capture the ephemeral and fleeting. Yet they document not only the lives of\u00a0young people as they live them in the present, but offer contributions as well to the larger culture \u2013 if only\u00a0libraries would take them seriously\u2026<\/p>\n

For further thinking on the neglected status of youth-produced writing and cultural production, read Kate Douglas and Anna Poletti\u2019s book: Life Narratives and Youth Culture: Representation, Agency and\u00a0Participation.\u00b9<\/em><\/p>\n

Part of our job, as youth allies, should be to reverse the depths of this neglect and deploy the formidable\u00a0skills and resources at our disposal to elevate the many ways in which young people document their world and\u00a0ours.<\/p>\n

\u00b9 Douglas, K., &amp; Poletti, A. (2016). Life Narratives and Youth Culture. London, England: Palgrave Macmillan.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  Why do libraries continue to strike out with young people? Anthony Bernier | January 2023 The answer to the question why libraries strike out with young people is simple: libraries envision young\u00a0people merely as information consumers, and many still believe that libraries are about books. And we wonder why young people make libraries the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-160776","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.youthfacts.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160776","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.youthfacts.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.youthfacts.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.youthfacts.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.youthfacts.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=160776"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.youthfacts.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160776\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":160779,"href":"https:\/\/www.youthfacts.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160776\/revisions\/160779"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.youthfacts.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=160776"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.youthfacts.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=160776"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.youthfacts.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=160776"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}