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The overarching assessment of youth services rendered by Leslie Edmonds in 1987 remains largely true today: that its most influential force remains not research, or evidence, or constant professional improvement or addressing field-based challenges, but "superstition." Research in youth services pedagogy, likewise, offers a perpetually weak response to the field's many and growing challenges. Professional associations advance long and undifferentiated lists of aspirations uninformed by evidence-based research. And course syllabi do not sufficiently differentiate conventional practice from the delivery of evidence-based and measurable definitions of success. Taken together, the teaching of youth services librarianship remains mired essentially in superstition, without a practice rooted in defensible evidence and lacking a clearly understandable, unique, and measurable indicator of success.

The IFLA Trend Report identified five trends that will impact the information environment (IFLA, 2015), such as access to information with new technologies, online education for global learning, hyper-connected communities, and the global information environment. The faculty at San José State University (SJSU) School of Information (iSchool) is engaged in a wide range of activities that focus on these trends--benefiting students, enhancing faculty professional development, and extending the school's impact on the global information environment. The importance of incorporating global perspectives in the curriculum to reflect changes in the way that communities around the world access and share information is the focus of numerous studies. The SJSU iSchool has been an early adopter of various practices to increase the range of international education, outreach, and research initiatives. This article provides examples of curricular, research, and collaborative projects that our faculty has developed, both for our students and for the global community of information professionals. Key initiatives presented include virtually abroad global projects, globalization of LIS curriculum, international LIS internships, international project-based learning, faculty professional development, and international collaborations. Collectively, these initiatives demonstrate the diverse ways the iSchool is addressing the need in higher education to reach across national borders, especially in the information field.

That campuses suffer unacceptable levels of violence is undisputable; they are part of a larger American society in which family, community, and institutional violence far exceed levels found in comparable Western nations. And yet, amid the finger-pointing and scapegoating of students as violent, we note a critical lack of evidence-based analysis, which is the basis for reasoned solutions. Are our students in imminent danger on our campuses? Are our campuses dangerous places? This investigation finds that, in fact, campus areas are considerably safer places for young adults than non-campus areas, although certain campus populations do suffer high rates of violence. This more complex profile of campus communities requires a new research perspective to better understand the simultaneously encouraging, troubling, and unexpected patterns of violence, crime, and risk today.

While instructors know the importance of successful small group collaboration, and the value of the skills required to execute them, students continue to prefer to work independently. The promise and development of recent online tools, however, and streams of recent research on small group collaboration, continue to produce less-than-satisfying or sufficiently generalizable pedagogical interventions. This study examines a more systematic attempt to direct students through specific tasks designed to improve their experience and produce higher quality student learning outcomes. Two groups of graduate students across four required online classes were surveyed about their attitudes and the steps they take when engaging assigned small group projects. The first group was offered a pre-recorded lecture as a resource while the second group was offered the same lecture plus additional specific ground rules to help avoid common negative experiences. Both groups were asked to complete surveys about their experiences. While many students continue to exhibit less-than-productive behaviors and practices, even after engaging the guidelines, some improvements did emerge. The study points out that more attention to pedagogical intervention is indicated if instructors hope to improve learning outcomes in valuable small group collaborations.

Discusses the Los Angeles Public Library's TeenS'cape, located in the middle of the city's Central Library. This technically sophisticated library space, opened after the 1992 L.A. riots, provides custom furnishings, postmodernist architecture, and equipment and materials specifically catered to the local teens, amid the culture of "anti-youth" attitudes. Each of the six zones that make up TeenS'cape is described. (AEF)

The article focuses on the remodeled TeenZone Department at the Oakland Public Library (OPL) located in Oakland, California. It says that the Zone's commitment to develop an appropriate space for young adults is evident in design choices that address the anatomical comfort of the young people. It adds that the Zone's collection is equipped to tailor the recreation and information needs of the urban youth.

Responds to the theme issue of the February 2003 edition of the periodical 'Voice of Youth Advocates,' which focuses on the role of libraries as a safe place for teenagers to be in. Need for libraries to provide a wide range of materials, sources and formats; Need for library management to protect young readers from those who would like to curtail the right of children to read; need to protect the institution from the negative effects of moral panic.