In-Service

This in-service project on teaching young people and their families about affordable cooking and nutrition was completed for LIS 60630: Reference Sources and Services for Youth. It connects to PLO Five: Identify needs and connect individuals and communities with information that engages and empowers them. I identified a need for education on nutrition and affordable home cooking. Then, I created a program to meet that need, including library events for different age groups, based on their individual needs, related to affordable cooking and nutrition, as well as recommendations for collection development, including cookbooks, nutrition magazines, children’s literature related to cooking and food (and recommendations for weeding such items), and online resources; additionally, I made recommendations for individuals and groups in a community that could be collaborators in this program. Then, I made a conference proposal, complete with a PowerPoint presentation and questionnaire, for an in-service about the program, so other librarians could produce a similar program on affordable home cooking and nutrition in their own libraries. This project relates to the ALA’s 6th Core Competency of Librarianship, which deals with reference and user services, especially 6A (“Employ techniques used to discover, retrieve, evaluate, and synthesize information from diverse sources for use by varying user populations and information environments”), 6D (“Implement principles, concepts, and techniques for understanding and assessing the information needs of a community, and understand the ways the library can assist and collaborate in meeting those needs”), 6E (“Engage in evaluation and assessment of programs, services, and partnerships, with input from the community being served”), and 6F (“Practice cultural humility while planning, offering, and evaluating library reference and user services”). This in-service project also connects to the ALSC Competencies for Librarians Serving Children in Libraries, in the section on programming skills, which states that a librarian “Designs, promotes, presents, and evaluates a variety of diverse programs for children, with consideration of equity, diversity, and inclusion; principles of child development; and the needs, interests, and goals of all children, their caregivers, and educators in the community” and “Establishes programs and services for caregivers, childcare providers, educators, and other community professionals who work with children, families, and caregivers,” as well as the YALSA Teen Services Competencies for Library Staff, which states that a librarian “Works with teens, volunteers, community partners and others to plan, implement and evaluate high-quality, developmentally appropriate formal and informal learning activities that support teens’ personal and academic interests.”