• Journal of the Korean Society for Library and Information Science
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• v.44 no.3
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• pp.199-218
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• 2010

This study evaluates YALSA's Competencies for Librarians Serving Youth: Young Adults Deserve the Best announced at the Young Adult Library Services Association(YALSA), a division of the American Library Association(ALA) on January 2010. For this study, we investigated fifth librarians working at the National Library of Korea to find out the requirements, effectiveness, and difficulties regarding seven areas and forth-eight detailed qualifications indicated by YALSA's Competencies for Librarians Serving Youth through survey. The results show that the more important areas required for youth services librarians were identified as knowledge of materials, administration, leadership and professionalism. Difficult areas of competencies are communication, marketing and outreach. Analysis of forty-eight detailed qualifications according to their importance and the level of difficulty shows that the more important areas are A4(encourage young adults to become lifelong library users by helping them to discover what libraries offer, how to use library resources, and how libraries can assist them in actualizing their overall growth and development) and A1(develop and demonstrate leadership skills in identifying the unique needs of young adults and advocating for service excellence, including equitable funding and staffing levels relative to those provided for adults and children), while the most difficult area of competencies is C4(Design, implement, and evaluate a strategic marketing plan for promoting young adult services in the library, schools, youth-serving agencies and the community at large).