Identifying the hypothetical adolescent in library and information science literature: Describing the reader constructed in recommendations of adult books for young adults

Abstract

Professional writing in library and information science (LIS) constructs and reifies an imagined and “hypothetical” (Sulzer & Thein, 2016) adolescent subject understood in developmental terms as the beneficiary of programs and services created by adults on their behalf. Whereas this figure of the adolescent has and continues to be called up in discussions of young adult literature and young people’s reading of the same, this construct is an implicit informant of professional assessment and recommendation of adult literature for young people. Content analysis of one year of reviews of mainstream adult fiction recommended for adolescent readers and published in the review journal, Booklist, surfaces this discourse in professional writing and demonstrates the ways in which its use in professional practice corroborates a deficit model of adolescence as it sanctions a narrow range of literate identities and practices for adolescent readers and affirms their engagement with only those genres and forms of writing adult professionals have approved for their consumption.