Serving LGBTQ Teens: A Practical Guide for Librarians

Practical guides for librarians

by Lisa Houde

There are few places an LGBTQ teen can turn for help - searching the internet at home leaves a potentially discoverable trail, teachers may condemn youth who seek their help, and certainly, in many cases, a teen's parents are not an option. While there have been advancements in acceptance of the LGBTQ population, there is still a firm stronghold on discrimination and teens still face the fear of potential alienation.

This leaves one of the only safe places for a teen to find information and, and indeed, find themselves in the context of the world - at the library.

Serving LGBTQ Teens offers the librarian a practical guide to library service to LGBTQ teens - from collection development, understanding terminology, dealing with censorship issues, programming and outreach, readers' advisory, and even to creating welcoming displays, librarians will find the tools they need to offer exceptional services for LGBTQ teens.--Joyce M. Latham, Associate Professor, School of Information Studies, Chancellors representative to the Chancellor's Advisory Committee for LGBT+ Advocacy at the University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee "School Library Journal"

Genres: LGBT

281 pages, Kindle Edition

Published June 4, 2018

Reviews

[Alexandra · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great primer for librarians who don't know where to start with serving queer populations! As Houde predicted, some bits are already outdated--including her definition for bisexuality and the lack of inclusion of the term "nonbinary" (though she does include "genderqueer"). For those who do not know, bisexual largely means attraction to more than one gender, not simply attraction to men and women.
I hope this primer leads people to do more research! For those readers who would like to learn more about the LGBTQ+ community, I would suggest "Queer: A Graphic History" and "Gender: A Graphic Guide," as well as the "A Quick and Easy Guide to..." series and books by the Pocket Change Collective.

[Andrew · Rating 4 out of 5]

Published in 2018,
this resource offers up a very good appendix of definitions for Gender identity and understanding the differences, it talks about collection development and staying contemporary with it, using or creating your own G-S-A, includes a long list of titles, descriptions and which category it falls under (Gay, lesbian, bisexual, transsexual, and others, plus non-fiction titles), there are tons of statistics on LGBTQ teens (from bullying, to demographics, etc)
It also addresses how the Library can deal with issues concerning censorship, acceptance or not, and other questions that may arise from the community, staff, schools or parents

[Kayla Martin-Gant · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a solid guide for librarians wanting to serve their queer teen populations, with lots of resources, case studies, and guidance. My only issue is that some of the terminology in the back (like the definitions of bisexual and asexual) BUT the note at the very beginning of that section that expresses the changing nature of some of this terminology, the fluidity and multi-faceted nature of identity and meaning, etc. and how all of that means that some of that terminology may not necessarily be entirely correct at the time of reading helps!

[Danielle Notz · Rating 3 out of 5]

Loved the ideas and resources. Good conversations throughout the book. I really appreciated the rundown of LGBTQ+ history near the beginning.