Developing Library Collections for Today's Young Adults

Book excerpt: Developing Library Collections for Today’s Young Adults features policies that deal expressly with materials that respect the intellectual freedom of young library patrons. It emphasizes the importance of everything from needs assessment to collection development, encouraging librarians to consider informational, recreational, and curricular needs and interests as the library staff select material on behalf of young adults. With detailed guidelines for developing and evaluating collections of print and electronic material, Amy S. Pattee devotes chapters to materials selection, acquisition, and assessment, describing fiction and nonfiction genres, graphic forms, and multimedia and electronic materials, including networked resources, e-books, and computer games. Developing Library Collections for Today’s Young Adults may be consulted by librarians charged with the development and maintenance of public library collections for young adults and may be employed in library science courses related to young adult literature and library services and collection development.