A Youth Services Specialist serves as the primary liaison between the library and its young patrons, providing reference assistance and reader's advisory services to children, teens, and their families. This dynamic role involves conducting engaging storytimes for various age groups, developing creative programming such as craft activities, book clubs, and educational workshops that inspire a love of reading and learning. The specialist is responsible for curating and selecting age-appropriate materials including books, audiovisual resources, and digital content to build a robust youth collection that meets community needs. The ideal candidate brings enthusiasm, creativity, and strong communication skills to make the library a welcoming and exciting destination for young people.

• Provides excellent customer service to both internal and external customers.
• Tracks and reports statistics for program area.
• Performs related duties, as assigned.
• Provides excellent customer service at a main service point within the library (the Youth Services desk).
• Assists patrons with computers and research (in person and on the phone).
• Handles patron complaints/comments, interprets policies in order to answer patron questions, handles emergencies and difficult situations (people and facilities), and maintains and distributes community information.
• Selects and deselects materials by assessing library's needs and ordering appropriate materials.
• Performs Reader’s Advisory services.
• Plans, develops, and prepares youth programming (may include off site programming) including scheduling venue, preparing developmentally appropriate content and leading the program or booking and vetting the presenter, creating flyers or other promotional items, purchasing appropriate materials, and hosting programs. May also conduct early literacy story times. 
• Places holds and finds materials for patrons.
• Assesses and markets library programs and services in order to provide the most relevant and needed services to the public.
• Helps staff with grant planning and assists with writing and implementation when needed.
• Assists patrons with use of the library online catalog (OPAC), online subscription databases and other electronic resources, the Internet, printing, and general computer use issues.

To review the full job description for this position, please click the following link:Class Specifications | Library Specialist | Class Spec Details

Minimum Qualifications

• Associates degree or 60 completed credits of college level coursework. 
• Two (2) years of relevant experience. 
• One (1) year of experience must be met through full-time working in a library. 
• A combination of relevant education and relevant experience may be substituted on a year-for-year basis. The required one (1) year of library work experience must be met through either through full-time library employment, part-time equivalent hours, or through a master's degree library/information science. 

Desired Requirements:

• Bachelor's Degree or higher in a related field.
• Three (3) years of progressively responsible employment in the library field.
• Knowledge of the local community and its resources.
• Fluency in a language other than English, particularly Dine, Hopi, and/or Spanish.
• Experience in early childhood education, storytimes particularly for ages birth through 5 years, ability to offer bilingual storytimes a plus (Youth Services and EFCL only).
• Experience planning, developing, and preparing library programming (Reference, Youth Services, and EFCL only).
• Experience talking about library services to groups (Reference, Youth Services, and EFCL only).
• Basic knowledge of and experience with collection development/maintenance.
• Experience working with interlibrary loan software and processing interlibrary loan requests (ILL position only).
• Cataloging experience for Collection Management Services (Collection Mgt only).

Other Requirements and Working Conditions:

• Regular attendance is an essential function of this job to ensure continuity.
• Must pass background, criminal history, and fingerprint check.
• Basic understanding of communication and customer service principles. Demonstrates competent written and verbal communication.