Evaluating Teen Services and Programs

Flowers, who has worked as a young adult librarian and deputy county librarian, offers a guide that provides basic information to help teen/youth services and general librarians, library directors, library school students, and middle and high school librarians examine aspects of their teen programs and services to find out what needs improvement. She does not assume they have a background in teen services, methods of data gathering, or models of evaluation, so provides a primer on who teens are, the reasons librarians serve them, and where libraries fit in their basic developmental needs; planning and implementing evaluation, including developing goals and objectives for evaluation, types of data evaluation, analyzing the data, and using it to make changes; evaluating teen collections, summer reading programs, ongoing programs and special events, and library staff; and best practices, with a focus on the Young Adult Library Services Association's Competencies and the Teen Services Evaluation Tool (which she developed). She includes examples, forms, and checklists. Annotation c2012 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)