They eyes have it - and other visual forms By Michael Cart

I began my job as a teen librarian in December. I work in a very small library within a small community. The YA section (fiction, non fiction, and the space we have) leaves much to be desired. Recently I began weeding the nonfiction section, something I was told my predecessor had never done in her five years there. I was also told by our adult librarian (who was this library's original YA librarian when they created the department about 15 years ago) that to create the YA non fiction section she and the director at the time simply pulled books from both the children and adult departments and re-catologed them as YA.

Armed with this knowledge I began my project. And I have found some pretty crazy things.

I have found some materials that have only become out of date within the last 15 years - such as titles that still said Osama Bin Laden was alive or that Pluto was still a planet.These were not crazy, but still disappointing to find.

Then I found titles that just blew my mind. Such as one about making balloon animals, copyright 1987.

 

Yes, this book was in the YA non fiction section up until a few days ago. 

An encyclopedia about math, which had it not been written in 1983 and devoted an entire chapter to how to use math as a tool to relax, may have peeked the interest of at least one teen. Maybe. 

 

The World Book of Math

 

And this lovely book that discussed differing opinions on the merits of child abuse. 

 

According to this book there is a benefit to child abuse! 

Among all this craziness I did find some wonderful titles that are more recent and up to date in their topic and reasoning. After getting through all the random adult and children's books that should never have been in the YA collection to begin with, and all the random titles with out of date information that had been ordered throughout the years, there is a relatively good, albeit small non fiction collection for the teenage reader. And now I know which areas need to be filled in with more current titles and which areas can wait a another year or two to add to. 

"There is no fictionalizing to be found in any of these fine writers' books-no imagined conversations, no messing with history or chronology to make a better story-all demonstrate the importance of creating a narrative and, to that end, of borrowing techniques from novelists without violating the accuracy or the integrity of their books' content." (Cart, 2010)

Having now personally looked at about half of the non fiction section in my library thus far, I can honestly say that this is a true statement. The books that were not written years and years ago for an adult or a child are wonderful. Despite not having ever weeded the collection, the librarian before me ordered a wonderful assortment of new and topical nonfiction for teens. The remaining books range in topic from LGBTQ rights to wonderfully illustrated adaptations of Beowulf. Now I'm looking forward to discovering new titles to replace the many outdated ones I weeded.