Issue 24 Spring 1998 - Providing Information to Help Young People Judith Coley	Collections under which this       article appears:       Projects Related Articles or Resources

Young people have many problems to face and choices to make as they grow from childhood to young adulthood, develop their relationships with each other and with people around them, and plan their futures and careers. As high school or children's librarians we observe all this happening, and however much young people may get you down sometimes, basically we are all there because we want to help them!

We provide resources and teach skills to help them in their studies. Do we have a role to play in helping them in their personal lives? I think so! Libraries are one of the options to which young people may turn for help. We can try to provide the information which they need to help them cope with their problems and make informed decisions. However for such provision to be effective the information has to be made accessible to the young people. My interest in this aspect of information provision was inspired by an article I read in Youth Library Review in 1993 in which Mark Drakeford 1, a social worker suggests that one of the reasons that young people have so many problems is the attitude prevalent for sometime by which young people were encouraged to live as they chose with minimal intervention from other people. He thinks that a pro-active attitude to information provision is essential.

For the purpose of the part-time degree course which I have just completed I planned and carried out a research project to try and find out how such information, community information, can be most effectively made accessible to young people aged 11-16 years. I decided to share the findings of my research n the hope that they are of interest to other people working in the same field as me. I was a student doing research and not a professional researcher, and s o I learned from my mistakes as I went along. My research methods were not perfect, but I think my findings have enough reliability and validity to make them worthy of sharing!

I decided to survey by questionnaire a sample of young people living in my local area which is Suffolk. To help me obtain what I hope is a representative sample of young people in this area, four schools of different sizes and with varying catchment areas, some urban and some rural, agreed to ask groups of pupils in school years 8 and 10 to take part. 150 questionnaires were distributed and 137 were returned completed.

Rather than expect young people to give personal and confidential information about themselves, which they might be reluctant to do, I chose to set out three imaginary situations and give them a list of 19 possible sources of information from which to select those which would or might possibly be helpful in each situation. The situations described concerned bullying, choosing a career and drug misuse. The possible sources of information fell into several categories which are talking to people already known personally, talking to experts, using written sources of information, using electronic sources of information, and not talking to anyone. Three of the options in the written sources category are using non-fiction books in a library, reading fiction from a library on the theme of the situation concerned, and using a careers library. One of the options in the electronic sources of information is using a computer database.

My intention was to analyse the data gained from the questionnaires and produce it in statistical form in order to identify the sources of information which the young people suggested would be most useful. Differences in the popularity of the various information sources in the different situations could then be seen. I also gained information about several local information providers of different kinds by asking them to complete a different questionnaire. Such questionnaires were completed by various advice services for young people, teachers, a librarian and a school nurse. This group are not considered representative of information providers in general but the information gained was compared with the data collected from the survey of young people. I also read a variety of the non-fiction and fiction relevant to the situations described in the main questionnaire.

If a possible source of information appeared to be a popular choice among the young people and seemed to be making accurate, up to date and relevant information available, I consider that it is likely to be providing accessible information and therefore providing an effective service to young people.

I preceded this research project with much background reading including a study of child development in order to come to some understanding of the characteristics of adolescence such as peer pressure and the need for self-identity. I also read reports of research projects on teenagers' reading skills and preferences, as I think these factors will affect how they use information sources. I found Elizabeth Hammer's article published in Youth Library Review in 1995 2, about her research among young people in Newcastle upon Tyne to be of great interest. Finally I attempted to relate this newly gained knowledge to the findings of the research, and then made some recommendations as to how the provision of community information to young people might be made more effective.

The findings of my research show that talking to people known personally such as parents, friends and teachers is a very popular choice as a source of helpful information in all three situations described in the questionnaire. In respect of talking to experts certain of the options appeared likely to be popular in certain situations, although some of the options received very low scores from the young people surveyed. For example using a telephone help line is seen as helpful for problems concerning bullying and drug misuse. Talking to a school nurse is also seen as useful for the drug misuse situation, and talking to careers adviser is popular in respect of the career choice situation. It seems that the services most likely to be used by young people are often those based in school or available by telephone rather than those requiring the young people to visit them elsewhere.

Concerning the options involving using information in written form, several of which have already been mentioned, and will be available in school and children's libraries, using non-fiction books in a library and using a careers library prove very popular options in the career choice situation. Using non-fiction books and reading fiction on a relevant theme are considered as likely to be helpful by a significant number of young people for drug misuse problems. However none of the options involving using written sources of information are considered useful by many of the young people for the bullying problem. Likewise young people appear to find using electronic sources of information such as databases and videos likely to be of help in respect of the career choice and drug misuse problems but not for the bullying problem. Happily very few people chose to speak to no one in any of three situations.

As already stated the information sources chosen by young people as likely to be helpful are only giving an effective service if they are providing up to date, accurate and relevant information. That is where those of us mainly concerned with providing information in written and electronic forms rather than in giving personal advice to individual young people, have a large part to play. The people to whom young people turn for help, need to have the right information to hand in order to give an effective service. In addition the young people, even though they may not by numerous, who come to libraries for help need to get the information they expect to find there.

As mentioned a separate questionnaire was completed by a selection of information providers. People known personally to the young people such as parents and friends were not included in this survey but it is probable that schools and libraries can play a large part in providing them with information on various topics in forms such as leaflets, books and videos. Perhaps libraries can promote the idea of providing information to help young people to help each other rather than making individuals feel personally targetted. The teachers, advice services and the school nurse surveyed all appeared to be well informed but libraries can help to bring alternative sources of information to their attention. For example I think there are many good teenage novels on the theme of bullying and many other relationship problems which may well be borrowed very little by young people on an individual basis. However they can be used very effectively by other information providers to whom young people with problems are likely to turn such as teachers, or friends.

However in respect of information for which young people may well turn to libraries I think we could do more! It appears that the young people surveyed expect to find careers information in both specialised careers libraries and in general school and public libraries. In some schools the careers library is housed in the main library but if this is not the case perhaps a selection of reference books and CD-ROM disks should be available in the library as well.

The young people surveyed also expect to find information about drugs and their misuse in libraries. In my experience such information is likely to be available but possibly not in a form which young people are likely to find accessible. Many of the series of books in print on drug misuse, bullying and various other problems are in the large hardback format which young people will associate with homework and doing project work. However accurate, up to date and relevant the information contained may be, the packaging is likely to dissuade teenagers from reading the books to find information to help them in their personal lives. I suspect that information aimed at helping young people with their problems is best provided in an informal entertaining style in paperback format. The popularity of the Horrible history series by Terry Deary shows that this approach works for history! I think it will approach to be the case for books for young people on personal problems.

A number of the young people surveyed also said that they would consider fiction on the theme of drug misuse to be of help. In the light of this I am very happy that a novel on this theme has won the 1997 Carnegie medal. In an interesting article in the Library Association Record for August 1998, Debby Raven 3 discussed Junk, by Melvin Burgess and the impact this book could have on both young people of today, and on the future of novels for young people. The story centres around some very believable and likeable characters and each chapter is written in the first person by one or another of the characters. Their world breaks up when the central group of friends realise that they are addicted to heroin. I just hope that this book is read by choice by many of the young people which it could help, inspite of the enormous peer pressure felt by teenagers to read certain series of horror and fantasy stories, or to read no fiction at all. Perhaps the story lacks something to make it impossible to put down which would have encouraged young people to keep reading to the end. By comparison Stone Cold, by Robert Swindells, which is a very good information source on the theme of the problem of homelessness, is also written in the first person by more than one character, but it is full of suspense as you wonder whether or not the serial killer will get the hero. Whether or not many young people read this book for themselves it is a wonderful source of helpful information for teachers and others to use with young people.

I have no proof as to whether any of my ideas will work in practice as I have only just completed the course, but I intend to let them influence my work as a school librarian especially in relation to the resources I choose to buy for the library and how I expect the young people to use the resource. I would be very interested to hear your views on what I have written, even if you totally disagree with me!

Finally I would like to tell you about the course I did in case any one else is interested in studying in this way. I qualified as a librarian in the early 1970s by means of the two year diploma course. After several years in a different branch of librarianship and a career break, I got a post as a part time school librarian and found myself rather out of my depth. To help to overcome this I studied on a part time basis first for a diploma of higher education and then for a degree by independent study at University College Suffolk in Ipswich. For the degree course I planned and carried out the research project described in this article. This was made possible with much help and support from several college tutors, but without attending taught classes or taking exams. My study skills and research skills were stretched and developed! My confidence as a professional librarian grew greatly and I am now a graduate! I recommend the course highly.

References
1. Drakeford, Mark (1993) Young people: an information black hole. Youth Library Review 15 p.7-14. Back to text
2. Hammill, Elizabeth (1995) The teenage brief: a bookseller's approach. Youth Library Review 19 p.16-23. Back to text
3. Raven, Debby (1997) Risks and reassurances. The Library Association Record 99(8) p.424-425. Back to text