I work in a library where children’s and adult programming is incredibly successful on the whole–I’m talking standing-room-only in a room that seats 175 people, and in a town of about 20,000, that strikes me as pretty good. Teen programs…not so much. We’ve had a few programs where I was floored by the number of teens who came–nearly 60 to a Black Tie Party that the Teen Advisory Board hosted, about 50 to our Summer Reading Finale party. But some, like book groups, chess programs, craft stuff….get zero kids, two, three–teeny numbers. So I’ve been thinking a lot about the kind of publicity I’ve been employing and how it should change.

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Waaaaay back when I started working at my library, my colleague Kate Sheehan and I talked about a program she had been meaning to try. We moved it to the back burner for many months, but this summer, we were able to get the planning process going, and the program began this fall.

We called it Juniors Helping Seniors, and here’s what it is: teens aged 13-18 tutor seniors (well, they don’t technically have to be senior citizens–they can really be adults of any age,  but the name is cute) on how to use a computer. The program is really geared toward adults who have little to no experience using a computer–this program isn’t for people interested in getting help concatenating spreadsheets, but rather for people who aren’t great at using a mouse, or downloading attachments from their email, or searching for information using Google.

I totally recommend organizing a program like this in your library, simply because it’s been working very well for us so far. If you’re interested, here’s how we did it.

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Last Saturday at ALA, the committee I’m on, Technology for YAs, sponsored “Downloadable Technology: Current and Future Trends,” a fantastic panel discussion featuring three speakers: Beth Gallaway on downloadable gaming, Kate Pritchard on downloadable and streaming music, and Karen Potash on OverDrive. If you weren’t able to attend, here’s an overview of how the panel gave librarians some great ideas about how to save money and keep on top of music, gaming, and ebook trends.

For the presenters’ slides, click here.

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I’m at Computers in Libraries this week, and this morning I attended Helene Blowers’s talk on digital natives. It was awesome. Helene is a great advocate for children and teens using technology. Here are some selected notes from her talk:

Identity—For teens, their online identity is the same as their in-person identity; they explore to see if a space is safe; their social identity is very important to them

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I’ve noticed a particular phenomenon among teens that I don’t see as much in children or adults. Actually, it’s two things.

1. Often, when I see a teen searching for a book on the shelves, and I approach her and ask if I can help her find what she’s looking for, she says no–even though it’s pretty obvious that she’s having trouble locating the title she wants.
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The candidates for YALSA’s elected positions spoke at an open forum here at Midwinter. They each introduced themselves and made a brief statement, and then answered questions from the audience. Here’s some of what they said. (Note that not all candidates were in attendance.) (more…)

As teen librarians, we have to connect with our users–and this may be true for us more than other library professionals. Teens are great at seeing straight through us, and being fake is no way to earn a teen’s trust or get them interested in using the library. With that said, there are some easy ways to learn about things that interest teens.

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I’ve been on Facebook for a little while now–maybe three years? When I was at my last job, in a school library, I didn’t friend any of my students, because there was too much personal information on my Facebook page…and it would be, I think, crossing a line. But I use it to keep in touch with friends. It’s probably the number one way I communicate with people these days, and I also use it as my photo management tool.

So now that I’m here in my new position, in my new community, I decided to use Facebook as a way to reach out to teens. I set up my new Facebook account at the end of the summer, with one picture and some rudimentary information on it, like my name, where I work, and some innocuous “personal information” that I thought might appeal to teens. (My favorite TV shows, for example–and this isn’t made up, they really are my favorites: Gossip Girl, House, Friday Night Lights, Project Runway, The Office.)

I also set up a fan page for my library. For information on how to create a fan page on FB, read this.

And I waited.

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I bought Spore last week. And it’s safe to say that it’s the coolest game I’ve ever played. I’m not a big gamer, but I do like simulation games–Sim City, Civilization, The Sims, MySims–because you can’t die and there’s no clear mission to the game; you just create things and try to control the world you’re in. (MySims is a little different: you do have goals that you have to meet to advance, but you still can’t die.)

You might know about Spore, because it’s been pretty hyped, but for the uninformed, here’s the basic breakdown. (more…)

I’m excited to go to YALSA’s first-ever YA Literature Symposium for a number of reasons (including getting to see my friends, and sneaking a trip to the country music hall of fame), but one of the most important is that this is the first conference I’ll attend as an official representative of my library. In the past, I’ve been a bit of a follower at conferences. I went to my first ALA midwinter this past January, and I wasn’t yet in my current position as a teen librarian, so I got to tag along a lot and learn the ropes. I went to Computers in Libraries (CiL) this spring, but talk about a conference where everyone knows each other and knows the drill–I was a definite newbie. (I don’t mean to say that I felt left out; the people I met were super nice and I even made some new friends.)

This time, it will be different…and I have the business cards to prove it.

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