You have the support of your library management, but you have no time, money, or space. How can you finally creating that teen space/center/area/room that you have been dreaming about?
Well it won’t be easy. As a matter of fact, it will be dusty and heavy and time-consuming. But all good things are worth the effort! Once you have secured approval from your boss the planning process can begin. Review the following ideas and mix-and-match to your heart’s content!
Idea #1: Ask the folks in Circulation for more shelf space for YA books. With their approval, shift adult books (or whatever is keeping you from expanding) away from the YA collection, giving yourself space to work with. Even if you don’t need the shelf space, you can use the more spread-out shelves to hold program flyers, set up book displays, hold bookmarks, display teen art work, and more. (Or perhaps the Director will walk through one day, notice the empty-ish shelves, and want to fill them? Or better yet, build you a Teen Center!)
If the idea of empty shelves scares you, ask a maintenance worker to help you take (some or all of) the actual shelves out of the shelving unit. Use that space to publicize events and put up larger displays.
Short on time?: Use volunteers! Teen volunteers are probably (hopefully?) the same teens that will be utilizing the Teen Space. Therefore, use them to help you shift. Offer volunteer/service hours or library card fine amnesty in return for their time.
Idea #2: Have a Teen Center that pops up wherever you have space. If you can’t have permanent space in your building, plan a weekly pop-up in your library’s meeting room or children’s storytime room. Bring TVs and gaming systems, laptop computers, a cart of new YA books, craft supplies, etc. Move the day and time around as it suites the needs of your teens, but try to do this on a regular basis.
Idea #3: Take that pop-up Teen Center to a local community center or school. Load up your car with all of the necessary equipment and set up shop in the non-library space. Plan this alongside a school’s afterschool tutoring program (maybe to begin immediately after tutoring sessions) and watch your attendance sky-rocket. While the teens play games, tell them about the library and invite them to visit and say hello to you next time they visit. *Have a special treat to give to the teens that do visit the library and seek you out. If possible, give them a teen-friendly tour of the branch and maybe even introduce them to a couple co-workers. Prove to them that they are welcome.
Idea #4: You know all those computers and comfy chairs in the adult area? Teens like those, too. Move a couple of each closer to the teen shelves. This encourages the teens to be comfortable in their own space, even if it’s a mere 20 feet from the adult area. Put a sign over the computers and chairs informing customers that they are for teens only (during non-school hours). *This will likely result in angry adult users once in a while. The “my tax dollars” fight will begin, but if you and the entire staff stand your ground this won’t continue forever.
Idea #5: If you have a bit of spare money (or receive a grant? Or win the lottery? Or acquire a millionaire benefactor?) purchase teen-friendly furniture and computers (Macs?) instead of just taking away from the adult area (a la idea #4). Put a plaque on the wall near all of this new stuff describing the area as a teen space and thanking those who supported it (Board, director, etc.). That way the teens and the adults who scope out the area know who it is for and why it is there. *Using private funds such as a donation or grant for these items will allow you to say, “These were not purchased with tax dollars,” which is a great way to put the kibosh on the ol’ “my tax dollars!” argument.
Idea #6: Display YA books and program flyers in the places where the teens are (i.e computer b
You have the support of your library management, but you have no time, money, or space. How can you finally creating that teen space/center/area/room that you have been dreaming about?
Well it won’t be easy. As a matter of fact, it will be dusty and heavy and time-consuming. But all good things are worth the effort! Once you have secured approval from your boss the planning process can begin. Review the following ideas and mix-and-match to your heart’s content!
Idea #1: Ask the folks in Circulation for more shelf space for YA books. With their approval, shift adult books (or whatever is keeping you from expanding) away from the YA collection, giving yourself space to work with. Even if you don’t need the shelf space, you can use the more spread-out shelves to hold program flyers, set up book displays, hold bookmarks, display teen art work, and more. (Or perhaps the Director will walk through one day, notice the empty-ish shelves, and want to fill them? Or better yet, build you a Teen Center!)
If the idea of empty shelves scares you, ask a maintenance worker to help you take (some or all of) the actual shelves out of the shelving unit. Use that space to publicize events and put up larger displays.
Short on time?: Use volunteers! Teen volunteers are probably (hopefully?) the same teens that will be utilizing the Teen Space. Therefore, use them to help you shift. Offer volunteer/service hours or library card fine amnesty in return for their time.
Idea #2: Have a Teen Center that pops up wherever you have space. If you can’t have permanent space in your building, plan a weekly pop-up in your library’s meeting room or children’s storytime room. Bring TVs and gaming systems, laptop computers, a cart of new YA books, craft supplies, etc. Move the day and time around as it suites the needs of your teens, but try to do this on a regular basis.
Idea #3: Take that pop-up Teen Center to a local community center or school. Load up your car with all of the necessary equipment and set up shop in the non-library space. Plan this alongside a school’s afterschool tutoring program (maybe to begin immediately after tutoring sessions) and watch your attendance sky-rocket. While the teens play games, tell them about the library and invite them to visit and say hello to you next time they visit. *Have a special treat to give to the teens that do visit the library and seek you out. If possible, give them a teen-friendly tour of the branch and maybe even introduce them to a couple co-workers. Prove to them that they are welcome.
Idea #4: You know all those computers and comfy chairs in the adult area? Teens like those, too. Move a couple of each closer to the teen shelves. This encourages the teens to be comfortable in their own space, even if it’s a mere 20 feet from the adult area. Put a sign over the computers and chairs informing customers that they are for teens only (during non-school hours). *This will likely result in angry adult users once in a while. The “my tax dollars” fight will begin, but if you and the entire staff stand your ground this won’t continue forever.
Idea #5: If you have a bit of spare money (or receive a grant? Or win the lottery? Or acquire a millionaire benefactor?) purchase teen-friendly furniture and computers (Macs?) instead of just taking away from the adult area (a la idea #4). Put a plaque on the wall near all of this new stuff describing the area as a teen space and thanking those who supported it (Board, director, etc.). That way the teens and the adults who scope out the area know who it is for and why it is there. *Using private funds such as a donation or grant for these items will allow you to say, “These were not purchased with tax dollars,” which is a great way to put the kibosh on the ol’ “my tax dollars!” argument.
Idea #6: Display YA books and program flyers in the places where t
Teens in your community may have the opportunity to take a fieldtrip to the nearest public library as a class or chaperone led group. Oftentimes they are there for a specific assignment they are researching but sometimes their instructor might bring them to the library for a general overview.
Besides planning your escape route or quickly hiding under the desk, if you see 30 + teens that you weren’t expecting, coming your way, what do you do?
Obviously, every library is different and because of location or purpose, some will be more conducive to being used by teens for fieldtrips. Others, this might not happen at all or very rarely. However, if you are a library that is fortunate enough to have busloads of teens dropped off during the week, here are some things you might consider:
- Always be prepared. If there is a way for the group to register themselves for the fieldtrip, and for whatever reason, they didn’t follow that route and just show up, you might initially feel a bit panicked and maybe even irritated. Have handouts of what they can do (monthly calendar, bulleted list of activities/drop-in programs) and booklists or a materials list of what they might be interested in checking out. This might be a different experience they receive then had they signed up. Make it clear the kind of enhanced experience they can get if they do so!
- If you do know a fieldtrip is scheduled, make sure everyone in your building is aware too. You can’t be everywhere at once. The first person who greets them at the door, might not be you, but you want the group to have a positive impression of the library and their visit.
- Have a group visitor policy available. If they do register, this can be communicated to them before they arrive. If they don’t, you can always hand a hard copy to them and highlight some of the major points they will need to know. The policy might include such information as where they can park, the ratio of chaperones to students, and how long they are able to stay.
- Don’t be afraid to revisit and revise! While we welcome the masses, they can also be intimidating if you’re not prepared. Developing relationships with the chaperones and the teens can help you meet their needs and still establish the library’s boundaries.
Feel free to share your fieldtrip experiences in the comments below.
If you’re like us at my library, you’re fairly limited in the software you’re allowed to use (ahem, Microsoft Office suite), and your in-house publicity is made with Publisher. If you’re in the habit of making signs or flyers for your programs, check to see if you’ve gotten into the clipart-gradient background-text rut. If this isn’t you, please please please help your fellow librarian who fits this description. If you’re thinking, But what’s wrong with my clipart?, I beg of you, please keep reading.
Backgrounds
Flyers and signs should be eye-catching, especially when you’re competing for the short attention span of teens, and it all starts with your background. It shouldn’t be just any color, or a color at all. The background you choose can determine what images you use, as well as the type and color of your font. If you choose a plain background, you’d better have an image that pops, and your font color should be a high contrast. On the other hand, if your background is an image, use other pictures or clipart sparingly (if at all), and consider a “washout” effect, essentially increasing the brightness and lowering the contrast. You want the text to be readable from a distance, and an image background can obscure readability.
Images
Think about cropping an image in a neat way to only use part of it. Instead of a floating ninja head, put that same head with the chin cropped off at the bottom of the flyer to make it look like it is looking over something. If you’re looking for something fresh, try searching through Google Images, Flickr, or other photo sites. Remember to keep copyright in mind, though, and look for images licensed through Creative Commons instead, which is often easier to use and understand.
Fonts
The last important element is the font. Even if your IT department protests every time you try to install something new, that doesn’t mean you can’t use special fonts. For a Halloween program, use a Friday the 13th-esque font or some other font that embodies your gruesome theme. Having a spa program for girls? Use a super girly font with a lot of flourishes. You can even try to match the font from a book cover (think Hunger Games). Here’s the trick: download the font, unzip it if required, and save the TrueType file to your desktop. Open the file, and like magic, the font becomes available when creating WordArt in Publisher. As long as the font file is open while your Publisher file is open, the font is available and will show up properly (Side note: even if you save the Publisher file, the font will revert back to a standard font if the downloaded font file is not open. To avoid this, save the file as a .jpg). Fonts can come from a number of sources, but my usual choice is dafont.com
The most important thing is don’t forget to have fun with this! What tricks have you learned along the way to keep your publicity from getting boring? Leave your answer in the comments.
I’m cheating a little because I haven’t actually played Minecraft with teens on the brand new multiplayer server space I just rented. But I do play a lot of Minecraft with my friends, I have talked a lot about it with teens, and I am going to offer the game as a regular teen program starting next week. Here’s what I’m doing to bring Minecraft to the library, and links to some interesting ideas about things you might do with it.
But first, what is Minecraft?
Minecraft is a game where you roam a landscape full of different sorts of blocks that you can move around to build anything you want. You can dig deep to find different resources, and explore to find a variety of environments. At night, zombies and other monsters come out, so you need to protect yourself. The game was created by Swedish programmer Markus Persson, and is being developed by his company Mojang. It’s still in beta, so there are new updates all the time. Minecraft is getting prettier and more involved with each new permutation.
I love this game because it demands creativity. You have a world, and you can do anything. It’s even more fun with friends, where in building your world you find yourselves cooperating by sharing resources, planning building projects, helping each other and showing off for each other. I can’t wait to see what happens when I turn my group of teens loose in their new world.
Here’s a video for you to take a look at Minecraft.
Click through for more.
You can buy the game here for $21.95, a discounted price while it’s still in beta. There is an outdated free version that you might try to see if you want to buy the game. I also recommend watching YouTube videos or looking at screenshots to get a feel for the environment.
Once you decide to play, your first task is to survive your first night. You need to find a way to protect yourself from zombies, skeletons, spiders, and other monsters, which in Minecraft parlance we call mobs. Ideally, you want to build yourself a shelter, but in a pinch, just stack yourself up on a tall stack of blocks, dirt or sand will do, and wait for morning. When the sun comes up you can search for more resources to strengthen your fortifications.
After you’ve tried it out for yourself, or at least done a bit of research, ask your teens about it. Are they playing Minecraft? Would they like to? You may find that some of them are already familiar with the game.
To play single player, you can buy one copy of the game, download the launcher to any computer, and let teens sign in with their own accounts. If you want to play together, you’ll need to set up a multiplayer server. There are instructions for how to host your own server available, which may appeal to some of your technologically inclined teens. You can also to rent space from a number of services. I’m renting space from Minecraft Box.
You may want to purchase a few copies of the game for your library, so that teens who don’t own the game can play. This might be tricky if you are bound by institutional orders because at this point, Minecraft can only be purchased with a credit card. It took some repeated queries for me to get permission to buy the game myself and get reimbursed.
Once you have interested teens, access to the game and a multiplayer server, the possibilities are limited only by your collective imagination. Plan a city, spread out and work on your own projects, explore the intricacies of the game, or make
Every librarian has experienced it. The heady rush of the weeks leading up to Teen Read Week where you promote the theme to patrons and staff, excitedly pull items for display, unleash your creative genius with promotion, and plan well-attended programming. Wait. Programming?
*Record needle screech*
Actually programming seems to be an aspect many librarians say does not come as easily as other aspects of the job, possibly because when it comes time to put people in the seats, putting ourselves on the line with the money or time investment in a program can be downright intimidating.
The first law of programming is Know Your Audience. YALSA and other librarians can give seven thousand great suggestions, but you are the one best equipped to determine what is going to fly in your library. You could read about an amazing anime tie-in to the Teen Read Week theme of Picture It @ Your Library, but if your patron group doesn’t know anime from animals and are all NASCAR fans, this is not going to work and, even worse, you’ve lost their trust because now they believe you have no idea what they like. Not good.
But those same patrons might be enthralled with a technology tutorial on Photoshop Elements where they “Picture It” by creating the car design for their favorite driver, right? Now you are a technology god or goddess who can name the top ten drivers and who even encourages them to send a copy of their design in a fan email to their hero. You know your audience and you have their respect and trust. Congratulations.
With your font of wisdom bubbling behind you, you may wish to consider these ideas as possible options for your fabulous audience.
- The book to movie connection is a natural tie-in to Picture It programming, so what about a poll of the best adaptation? It can be either paper or posted on your library website using your blog software, a Google Docs form, or a service like Surveymonkey. The culmination can be a Saturday night viewing of the movie that won, with a discussion afterward about whether the film managed to convey the emotion of the book.
- Poetry and writing groups can find inspiration in using images to inspire their work. Whether its encouraging them to bring in their own original artwork or photos, pulling those glossy color art books off the shelf, or using a cool service like PicLit, showing the connection between writing and images can get creative juices flowing.
- Book trailers are another natural tie-in to this year’s TRW theme. Actually teaching movie making software is certainly an option, but using super easy sites like Animoto and Glogster are also great ways to showcase the teen vision of a specific book, with far more instant gratification. If there aren’t enough computers to go around for your patrons, what about just having a viewing of book trailers, maybe recent releases? A discussion about which elements make readers want to pick up the book in question could be a great jumping off point for understanding reader tastes in your library.
- Book to Picture is a quick way to get your readers looking at themselves (younger audiences love this). Have readers pose with the favorite book and print or post t
Image by flickr user benessere
Teens can feel (and genuinely be) pretty marginalized in their communities and in their own lives. Part of what we can do as librarians is to empower teens and to advocate for them within our institutions and our communities. This kind of advocacy is also one of the evaluation criteria YALSA provides in its
Teen Services Evaluation Tool. Today, I’ll be providing some ideas on how to be an advocate for teens.
Be an advocate for teens within the library
Make sure that what’s going on in teen services is on administrators’ minds. Emphasize what teens are doing for the library, whether that means highlighting the awesome program your Teen Advisory Board just organized with the children’s department for younger patrons, bringing in quotations from satisfied adults who have made use of your Teens as Tech Trainers class, or even just emphasizing how much of your circulation over the summer was teen materials. Always have some new fact, statistic, or piece of feedback that you can share with a Board member or your director if you find yourself with a minute in their company.
Train your colleagues. Make sure that all staff members, even–especially!–those who aren’t youth services librarians by title know about what’s going on with teens in your community and what resources they might need. Give them a quick run-down of the <a href="“>40 Developmental Assets and how your library is helping provide them to teens. Provide them with book lists, homework help resources, and other materials that will help them serve teens when you’re not.
Represent teens at meetings. Find out about new initiatives going on at your library and make sure that teens’ needs are being met. Ask your teens about how the library can serve them better–and then find a way to do those things. Examine existing policies and ask, “Do these policies serve teens fairly?” If not, work to change them. Make sure that teen interests and needs are represented in everything from the mission statement to circulation policies to the layout of the building.
Be an advocate for teens in your community
Teens often get a bad rap, but you can help counteract that by speaking up for your teens in the community. Never pass up an opportunity to talk about the good things that teens are doing at the library and elsewhere with community members and the movers and shakers in your area. In Young Adults Deserve the Best: YALSA’s Competencies in Action, Sarah Flowers suggests having an “elevator speech” handy for when you have just a minute or two to talk up teens.
Being an advocate for teens in the community also means helping them find opportunities to harness their powers for good. Hook teens up with volunteer activities. Help cultivate a culture of helping one another and creating safe spaces. If your library doesn’t already have a Teen Advisory Board, create one and start developing your teens’ agency within the library and the community by having them help you plan programs, fundraisers, food drives, and more. Help your teens by helping them do good–and then tell everyone about the good they’ve done.
Be a personal advocate for teens
Many of us work with teens every day, and in doing so, we get to know them well and become informal ment
Several months ago I put out a question on Twitter asking members of my professional learning network how they were using infographics in their advocacy efforts. It was a little surprising to me that only one person responded with an example. Others responded by saying things like, “Oh, that’s a good idea.” But, it looked like people weren’t using infographics as a way to inform their library community about what they do and why they do it.
Then I talked with YALSA Board member/Strategic Planning Chair and high school librarian Priscille Dando about data, advocacy, and infographics and I found out that she used PowerPoint to create a visual that demonstrated the use of her library in the spring of 2010. One thing that really struck me about Priscille’s infographic was that it was produced simply with PowerPoint, a tool that most (if not all) librarians have access to, and it used clip art to effectively get out the message that the high school library is an active vital part of the school community.
Perhaps one of the reasons that more librarians aren’t using infographics in order to tell their library story is because it seems like they are difficult to produce. As Priscille’s visual demonstrates, it doesn’t have to be a challenging activity. Along with PowerPoint and clip art there are a host of tools available for creating infographics. These include:
- Many Eyes – This tool from IBM gives users the chance to upload data and create visual displays for that data. Display types include charts, graphs, and word and phrase clouds. One really nice feature of Many Eyes is that when reviewing the types of visualizations the site provides tips on what each type is best used for. For example, under the heading “see relationships among data points” scatterplot, matrix chart, and network diagram are listed.
- Creately – This is a web-based tool (with a desktop version also available) that provides templates for a wide-variety of types of diagrams, including some specifically geared to those in K-12 education. A good feature of Creately is that it’s possible to collaborate with others when using the program for infographic building and design.
- Wordle – Many blog readers are familiar with Wordle and it’s good to remember that this is a tool that can be used to create advocacy-based visuals for the library. Think about how you might use Wordle to display visually all of the ways that teens describe the library. Or to show the words and phrases that come up over and over again when teens and others in the community talk about the value of library teen services. If you start to think about it I bet you’ll see that Wordle has a lot of potential as an infographic building tool.
Along with knowing how to create infographics it’s also important to think about what data is best to use in a visual display. Not all information lends itself to this format. In the article Ten Awesome Free Tools to Make Infographics the author states, “Remember that it’s all about quickly conveying the meaning behind complex data.” As you look at the data and information that you want to get across to members of your community keep that idea in mind. Ask yourself questions like:
- Which data lends itself to a visual display?
- What data is going to best help others understand the role of library teen services within the community?
- Is there data that when shown visua
A few years back at BEA or ALA Midwinter, a publisher’s exhibit gave me a great idea for highlighting books. They had bookmarks with stars above the titles which highlighted a title’s reviews and awards. Of course, by the time I wanted to make my own bookmarks, I’d long since lost the one sample I had from the conference. So I’ve had to make my own.
Since I could make whatever kind I wanted, I decided to make three different types:
- One to highlight Award Winning titles (though I did not mention the exact award on the bookmark)
- One to highlight New York Times bestsellers (because these titles may not be new, but they will be titles my patrons want to find)
- One with a blank space (so that patrons or librarians could highlight titles)
I made these at the beginning of the school year, and as awards were announced and bestsellers added to the NYT lists, I switched and alternated my books on display with ease.
So, here’s a step by step to making these bookmarks for your own library.
Materials needed:
- Bookmark template (PDF Template and DOC Template availabe here — feel free to edit to fit your library needs)
- 8 1/2 x 11 Card stock in a variety of colors
- Printer or copy machine that accepts card stock
- Exact-o knife & cutting board (2 pieces of cardboard work in a pinch)
- Laminating machine (or clear contact paper)
- Scissors
Instructions:
Step 1: Choose bookmark to create and print/copy template onto card stock colors of choice.
Step 2: Using the Exact-o, cut the bookmark at all the outer lines.
Step 3: Cut the spaces inside the bookmark marked by thick black lines (U in the bootom of all bookmarks, Triangle in the Award winner bookmark, Square in the Blank Ribbon bookmark, and series of black triangles in the NYT bookmark)
Step 4: Using a laminating machine (I love my Xyron) laminate each bookmark. If you don’t have access to a lamination machine, clear contact paper will also do the trick, though it’s a bit more unwieldy. This step provides GREAT durability.
There are libraries that don’t blog, tweet, have a Facebook presence, etc. because they aren’t quite sure how to be safe in that environment. By safe I’m talking about being sure that staff are clear on the ways social media can and should be used in a professional setting for professional purposes.
Isn’t the choice not to use social media for this reason similar to not purchasing materials because staff might make mistakes in the selection process? But, staff do purchase materials because they are expected to know the needs of customers and because they are considered to be professionals and respected as such. Along with that, most libraries have a collection development policy that supports and guides staff in making collection decisions.
A social media policy can and should do the same thing. A social media policy is something that every library should have. A social media policy:
- Lays out the purpose of posting on sites like Twitter and Facebook and YouTube as a library staff member.
- “Forces” the library to think about what they want to achieve when using social media.
- Gives all staff the knowledge of how they are expected to use social media when doing so in their staff role.
- Helps to inform the community about the library’s use of social media.
There are some very useful resources that provide examples of social media policies and information on what to include in a social media policy. Two to check out right away are Social Media in the Workplace: Does Your Nonprofit Organization Need a Social Media Policy and Should Your Company Have a Social Media Policy.
Keep in mind that really what you want to develop is a social media policy that is the legal document approved by the governing body, and therefore is not very flexible, and a set of guidelines that do not require the same legal approval and can be more easily updated and revised.
In a library social media policy and associated set of guidelines you’ll want to think about including:
- Information on the purpose of the library’s social media use.
- A comparison between posting as a library employee and posting within a more personal context.
- Examples of the type of content a staff member might post in a social media environment.
Think carefully about how specific you get in the policy as you don’t want to limit yourself and colleagues too much. If you write in the policy that specific tools should be used, then you make it hard to start using something new that might appear on the scene. In the guidelines you create you can mention specific tools and update that regularly to reflect the current state of social media.
By the way, YALSA’s next webinar is on social media policies and you can still sign-up. Also, the YALSA Board just approved their own social media policy. You might want to check that out to get some ideas.
Many librarians spend a lot of time plotting and scheming ways to get teens in the door. It is sort of a “develop the programs and they will come” mentality. That is nice, but let’s be honest. What we really dream is having our teen spaces be hangout places; spaces teens feel comfortable spending free time. The main way to make this dream a reality is to build a sense of community within your teen department. There are several ways to jump-start the process:
1. Create a Welcoming Space
The first step is to create a place in which teens will want to gather. Often, our library buildings are older and were not created with specific teen spaces in mind, so spaces have been carved out of nooks, corners, and crannies. If you have a teen specific space, Hooray! It should be easy to make your department teen friendly. If not, here are two tips to help make your space appealing to teens: Make sure teens can be a little loud, without disturbing other patrons and make sure teens have a feeling of privacy. Notice I said Feeling of privacy, not complete privacy. While teens need to feel comfortable enough to relax, it is probably unwise to give them a closed off corridor far away from any adult eyes.
2. Build on Existing Communities
The simplest and quickest way to develop community is to build onto an existing community! Several YA authors and books have sparked interest groups that have developed into powerhouse communities. Though there are many such communities, two in particular are Nerdfighteria and the Harry Potter Alliance. Nerdfighteria sprung up around the YouTube vlog of John Green (2006 recipient of the Michael L. Printz Award and author of Looking for Alaska and other best-selling titles) and his brother Hank Green. Nerdfighters are people who try to decrease “world suck” and increase awesome. The Harry Potter Alliance mission statement says they take “an outside-of-the-box approach to civic engagement by using parallels from the Harry Potter books to educate and mobilize young people across the world toward issues of literacy, equality, and human rights.” You can let teens know the library has meeting space available for their group, or, depending on your libraries policies, your TAG could recruit other teens to help start a chapter of HPA or other group.
3. Use your Teen Advisory Group
Another way to build a sense of community is to use your Teen Advisory Group. Of course, you should meet to develop programs and plans for world domination, but you can also meet just to hang out. Get your teens to bring a friend to a meeting. When the newcomers see how much fun everyone is having, they will want to be a part of the group too!
4. Create a Common Goal
Whether it is a reading challenge, a fundraising activity, an outreach plan, or even a fitness challenge, having a common goal is a great way to create a sense of belonging.
5. Give them a Voice and Listen
All of your planning and hard work will be for naught if the teens in your community don’t feel like they are being heard.
If you have tried everything and you still can’t Pay teens to linger in your fabulously designed department, Don’t Give Up! Keep trying different ideas to see what resonates with the teens in your area. My hope is that by creating a sense of community among the teens in our libraries, we will create a greater community for our cities and towns.
As always, I would love to hear what You are doing in your library. What things have worked for you? What has failed miserably, but you think would work for someone else?
This year’s theme “Picture It @ Your Library” is a great time to recommend books that either have a picture based format, such as graphic novels, or those that include comic strip types of illustrations, such as the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series by Jeff Kinney or The Accidental Genius of Weasel High by Rick Detorie. Besides just those types of books, you can also use this year’s theme “Picture It @ Your Library” to focus on giving book talks or creating book displays that have to do with art, drawing, photography, movies, and films. There was a recent discussion on the YALSA Book discussion listserv in which many of those in the teen services library world, who I must give credit to, put together a fabulous list of books that go hand in hand with this year’s theme. Here is what they came up with:
Drawing:
Stitches: A Memoir by David Small
Metamorphosis: Junior Year by Betty Franco
The Day My Mother Left by James Prosek
Ink Exchange by Melissa Marr
Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson
Page by Paige by Laura Lee Gulledge
Plain Janes by Cecil Castellucci and Jim Rugg
Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
Art/Art School:
Pieces of Georgia by Jen Bryant
Same Difference by Siobhan Vivian
See What I See by Gloria Whelan
Heist Society and Uncommon Criminals by Ally Carter
The Vanishing Point: A Story of Lavinia Fontana by Louisa Hawes
A Map of the Known World by Lisa Ann Sandell
Photography:
Exposed by Kimberly Marcus
Flash Burnout by L.K. Madigan
Hold Still by Nina LaCoure
Razzle by Ellen Wittlinger
Rain is Not My Indian Name by Cynthia Leitich Smith
A Summer to Die by Lois Lowry
The Photographer by Emmauel
Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac by Gabrielle Zevin
Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs
Mystery of the Fool and the Vanisher by David Ellwand
Film/Movies/Screenplays:
Carter’s Big Break by Brent Crawford
Monster by Walter Dean Myers
Boy Proof by Cecil Castelluci
Violet and Claire by Francesca Block
My Life Take Two by Paul Many
Geek Charming by Robin Palmer
Viola in Reel Life and Viola in the Spotlight by Adriana Trigiani
By: Jessica Skaggs
HOW TO: Collection Development on the Fly
It’s time for that little bit of money to be spent and quickly or it will be spent by someone else. You haven’t had any time to work on an order and you don’t want to make a mistake. Look to the lists below to help you find all kinds of exciting books, DVDs, and audio books that should be in your library.
Every title on every YA list will not be automatically suitable for your collection. To double-check yourself, when you add a title to your order list, you can quickly skim the reviews provided by your jobber to see if an item matches your needs. Look to the sections for older readers in the children’s lists for other titles, especially if you serve middle school age.
YALSA Best Books for Young Adults
YALSA Award for Excellence in Nonfiction for Young Adults
YALSA Quick Picks for Reluctant Young Adult Readers
YALSA Great Graphic Novels for Teens
YALSA Printz Award and Honor Books
YALSA Amazing Audios for Young Adults
YALSA Fabulous Films for Young Adults
YALSA/ALSC Odyssey Award
ALSC Notable Children’s Books
ALSC Notable Children’s Videos
ALSC Notable Children’s Recordings
ALSC Newbery Award and Honor Books
ALSC Sibert Informational Book Medal and Honor Books
Projects of the Children’s Book Council in collaboration with ALA and other professional organizations:
Notable Social Studies Trade Books for Young People
Outstanding Science Trade Books for Students K-12
Coming up with ideas for programs can be a daunting task, especially to a new teen programmer. Coming up with cheap programs is even harder. I’m going to share some tips on how to accomplish effective and inexpensive teen programs.
The main thing that will help you out with programming is to know your resources. One of your most valuable resources is your children’s librarian- they are notorious hoarders. If you have an idea but don’t know how to convince your manager to pay for the supplies, check with your children’s librarian. She will happy to share those toilet paper rolls she has been storing for the past ten years “just in case.” She will also have great suggestions on how to make your program more successful. If you don’t have an idea for a program, look through her stash- you might find some great treasures there.
If you are having a hard time coming up with ideas for programs, go online and check out what other libraries are doing. You’ll be able to find something you think has potential and adapt using the things you already have available to you. There are also some really great websites for cheap crafts. You may have to think creatively to figure out how to adapt things to work with what you already have or to make it appropriate for you audience.
Another thing that can make it easier to do cheap teen programs is to pick a theme and stick with it for a month or a quarter or whatever time period you like. Summer Reading is always so great for programs because we are given a theme and it is so easy to come up with program ideas based on a theme.
Another great resource is to use your co-workers, friends and family. If you need supplies for a program, put an email out asking for help. I have about 20 soda bottles and empty chip bags because I needed them for programs this summer and sent an email to my co-workers. People are glad to help out.
You can also check with your community to see who is willing to come and do free programs. I have had NASA come and do a program. I have also worked with local universities to have them come and do workshops on gaming and science. I have had the police department and fire department come do demonstrations geared towards teens. One time the bomb squad came out with a robot they use to check out bombs- it was very cool. I have had local authors come and do programs for free. You might be surprised how many people are willing to help out the library for free. And it never hurts to ask- the worse that can happen is that you’ll be told no, leaving you in the same place you are now.
But, your most important resource is yourself. In August I did a middle school program with a caveman theme. One of my co-workers came up with idea to make pet rocks. The kids LOVED it. The reason they loved it is because my co-worker and I had so much fun with it. We were cracking jokes about how our rocks had different personalities and how expensive it was going to be to feed them and made other stupid commentary about the rocks. All of the kids created two or three “pets” using markers to make faces on the rocks.
This just goes to show that you don’t have to have $100 worth of supplies to have a successful program. You just have to use the resources you have, be creative and a good attitude and you’ll be golden.
If you’ve ever bumped into a teen you serve out in the “real” world, outside of the comfortable confines of the library, the interaction may have left you a little unsettled. Your personal life–your private life–is yours, right? You do things outside of work that you wouldn’t do in front of (or with) teens.
So what happens when you bump into a teen in the online world?
The way I see it, you have three choices when it comes to interacting with teens via social media.
1. Don’t Do It. Just don’t. Lock down your Facebook profile, never accept a friend request from a teen, keep your Twitter stream private and don’t allow any teens to follow you. I know plenty of librarians and educators who choose this option, and in fact an increasing number of of school districts are enacting policies to discourage (or outright forbid) teachers from “fraternizing” with students online.
2. Keep It Professional. Either maintain separate profiles for your work self and your personal self–interacting with teens only through the work profiles–or lock down your settings so that teens can only access so much. One of the easiest ways to do this is to create a list for students in your Facebook settings. Any teen you add as a friend automatically gets the most stringent settings–no access to your photos or videos, no access to your wall, no interaction with your other friends.
3. Take the Plunge. Let teens follow you on Twitter. Make mistakes, and learn from them. Find out why teens want to interact with you online. Is it because this is the way they prefer to communicate? If so, your library is making a mistake if you don’t have a presence in this world. Is it because they like what you have to say, and are taking the opportunity to “hang out” with you outside of the library?
If the thought of teens finding you on Facebook or Twitter strikes fear in your heart, maybe you should take a long, hard look at your profile and figure out why. If it’s because you want to keep your life to yourself, consider option 2; that way, you can reach out to teens on behalf of the library without compromising your own boundaries. But if you want the chance to see what teens are really saying to each other online, take a deep breath, and try option three.
Yesterday I was talking with some friends and colleagues and at one point someone was telling us about her experience doing work on her iPad and she said, “I was using the Side by Side app.” “What,” I said, “What’s the Side by Side app?” I found out that Side by Side gives iPad users the ability to look at more than one window at a time on the iPad screen. It’s the type of app I’ve been looking for for a few weeks.
I’ll admit it, it can be hard to keep up with all of the apps coming out that could be of use to librarians working with teens. I try very hard to stay on top of the best and the most interesting, but obviously, I don’t succeed 100%. Yet, I think I’ve come up with a pretty good system for finding a lot of useful apps. Some tools I use are:
- Mashable, Read Write Web, and KQED MindShift are three blogs that don’t just focus on apps but often posts will mention, highlight, or review apps. I make sure not to just pay attention to the apps that are specifically related to youth or education and libraries. I also pay attention to apps that aren’t seemingly teen or library related and think about whether or not there is a connection between the app and the work of teen librarians. Don’t forget local and national newspapers too for this same kind of information. I read the New York Times technology section looking for information on new apps or new types of apps and think about how these perhaps non-educational apps can have an impact on work with teens.
- My professional learning network (PLN) on Twitter, other virtual PLN environments, and face-to-face networking. I’ll ask my PLN what apps people are using or if someone has a recommendation for a type of app. It’s these kinds of conversations that can lead to learning about a particular type of app that I might not have even known existed.
- Both the iTunes app store and the Android MarketPlace have education sections. I spend time looking at the apps that have just been released and apps that are getting good reviews. I find it really useful to see what’s new and get a sense of what’s popular with users. That gets me thinking about what might work in libraries and what teens might be interested in.
- YALSA App of the Week is published on this blog every Wednesday. It’s a great place to find out about apps and read about what librarians working with teens think about apps and how they can support teen services. Several times I’ve read the YALSA App of the Week column and learned about something new.
- Teens are a great resource for learning about apps. I know not all teens have devices on which apps work, however many do and by talking to teens directly it’s possible to find out what they use, what they like, and why.
It might not seem important to keep up on apps if you aren’t a user of a device that supports them. However, some teens in your community are probably using apps and in order to serve them successfully it’s a good idea to know what’s out there. Also, it’s a good idea to prepare. Digital devices and apps are not going away. They are going to grow in importance in libraries. If you start to learn now you’ll have to do a lot less catch-up in the future.
Do YALSA Blog readers have other ways of keeping up with apps? Post your how to keep up with apps advice in the comments.
Particularly in a school setting, where teachers may tend to socialize mostly with other members of their department or discipline, it can be really hard for librarians not to isolate ourselves. Heck, the library itself might be isolated–some buildings stick the library on a separate floor, or off in a corner, or on modular campuses the library might be out in the boonies.
The architecture of your library might be working against you, too. Maybe your circulation system or reference computer is located behind a formidable desk. Maybe the teen area is on a separate level, or lumped in with the children’s area but apart from adult services.
So how do you make sure you don’t become your own little lonely island, only seeing your colleagues (or your teens) if they happen to come by your desk?
Simple: leave your desk.
My library is located across from the main office, apart from all the academic areas. If a student has to get to the band room from the library it’s no big deal, but the trek from the library to, say, one of the foreign language rooms or a science lab can be pretty epic.
I also have one of those offices that’s built into a corner, behind my big ol’ desk. It’s where my computer is, and my only phone (which has a habit of ringing while I’m in the stacks) is back in the office, where I have little hope of reaching it if I’m anywhere but a few feet away.
Here, then, are my top three tips for getting myself out from behind the desk:
1. Never call or email when you can talk face-to-face. I’m not going to go barging in on classes during the day, but I do pay attention to teachers’ prep periods and lunch schedules. I also talk in person with guidance counselors and everyone in the front office, because they spend so much of the day on the phone as it is–why not have a friendly, in person conversation for a change?
2. Volunteer to do a good deed. We often find ourselves with more teacher vacancies than subs, and I always offer to cover a class if I can. I get a chance to see what students are doing in the classroom–which can be very different from what they’re doing in the library–and I’ll get a chance to at least say hello to other teachers in that wing or department while I’m there. I find that students who see me in the halls suddenly remember a book they wanted to renew, and teachers suddenly remember a question about books for a particular lesson.
3. Get involved somewhere else in the building. Aside from being the librarian, I also advise the Gay-Straight Alliance and the yearbook, have a tenth grade advisory group, often find myself chaperoning a fan bus for a sports game, and… okay, I should probably stop there. The point is this: I want teens, and teachers, to know that I have interests (and expertise) outside the library. If we can talk about football or senior pictures, there’s a better chance they’ll be able to come to me if they need help elsewhere–even the library.
So how do you get out from behind your desk?
Because I can put groups of people together in a circle and then connect with just those people when I want to start a conversation or have a Hangout. Circles are really easy to create and those you connect with in Google+ can be in more than one Circle. In a library you might create a circle for different groups of teens. Perhaps one circle for teens who are members of the teen advisory board and another circle for those interested in anime. Or a circle of colleagues that like to talk about technology and another circle just for those who are interested in steampunk. 
When writing something for your stream it’s possible to select who gets to read the post and you can select more than one circle, or simply send to all those that follow you on Google+. A favorite part of streams is that conversations can easily take place within a particular post. People can reply to a post you write which provides great opportunities for talking about a variety of topics with colleagues or teens. An added bonus is that it’s easy to edit a post if you realize that there’s a typo or you think you can articulate an idea more clearly if revised.
The best way to start a Hangout is to put a circle of participants together and then invite that circle to the Hangout. (If you simply invite each participant on their own then the Hangout isn’t private and others might join unexpectedly.) Imagine you do have a circle of teens who help you plan anime programs, you could simply start a Hangout and invite them to join. Then you can get some work done even if the teens are not in the library. Hangouts include a chat feature and the ability to watch YouTube videos together. Imagine watching anime with your anime circle while you plan a library program in a Google+ Hangout.
