University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill will facilitate a national conversation about the future of LIS Youth services education. It will include roundtables with LIS faculty at national conferences, a website, webinars, and social media. The goal is to get a deeper understanding of today's youth and what that means for the education of public librarians serving youth. The project will include hosting conversations with LIS faculty and in-service youth librarians, conducting an environmental scan on the needs of youth today, studying the perceptions of other youth-focused organizations that work to strengthen youth success, and establishing what innovative public libraries are already doing. Based on the information collected from the conversations, they will host a two-day symposium with keynote speakers, a panel presentation, facilitated discussions, and participatory activities to explore questions and issues that emerged and to imagine how higher education LIS curricula could change to meet the needs of future youth library professionals and their young constituents. The symposium will result in a preliminary report as well as a website featuring the ideas generated throughout the project.