What does it take to be a youth services librarian?

Let's face it: working with young people in libraries can be fun and rewarding, but it is hard work. The major professional associations allied with youth services librarianship have developed sets of competencies to help practitioners, library and school administrators, students, and the public better understand the skills, knowledge, and dispositions necessary to be successful. 

Take a look at these competencies. If you are a current or retired youth services librarian, what's missing? How would you change these lists? If you are a pre-professional youth services librarian, in what areas do you need assistance?

• ALSC (Association of Library Service to Children) Competencies for Librarians Serving Children in Public Libraries
• YALSA (Young Adult Library Services Association) Competencies for Librarians Serving Youth
• AASL (American Association of School Librarians) Standards for Initial Preparation of School Librarians

And if you're curious, see what you would have been learning had you been a student at the Carnegie [Library] Training School a hundred years ago!

A Voice from the Past: Margaret Edwards

For me, Margaret Edwards was a consummate pragmatist. For decades beginning in the early 1930s, she tirelessly advocated for the value of library work with teens through her position as a librarian at Baltimore's Enoch Pratt Free Library. In 1988, with a gift from Edwards' estate, the American Library Association established an award in her memory, which honors authors of books for young adults.

Edwards had much to say about youth services librarians' fetish with card catalogs, which still apply to the profession and OPACs today. Here's one example from The Fair Garden and A Swarm of Beasts: The Library and the Young Adult (original published in 1969, reprinted by ALA in 2002):

If we gave up our futile attempt to teach everyone to use the catalog, the time saved could be spent in the intensive promotion of reading. We could use the time for more class visits to talk about books, assembly programs on reading, book lists, reading clubs, and above all, work with individuals on the floor of the library (p. 79).

I see many lessons to be learned from this thought, but most important is questioning tradition. What do we value? What do we do that is inessential? What might we do instead?