Abby’s Road is a podcast in which high school senior, Abby Laporte, talks with peers and adults about a variety of topics of interest to teens and the adults who live and work with them. Over the life of the podcast Abby and her guests have covered topics including visiting colleges, sexual orientation, abuse, and, most recently, technology. (You can listen to the most recent podcast.)

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 6 or above) is required to play this audio clip. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

When listening to the latest podcast in the series, I was once again reminded of the value adults need to place on teen abilities to think critically. Throughout the podcast, Abby and the teens she talked with, demonstrated that they are all aware of the need to think about the actions that they take online. They also know that sometimes the actions they choose aren’t necessarily the best. (more…)

When I walked in my library this morning, I had no internet. No intranet, even–I couldn’t load the high school home page at all.

On another morning this might have sent me into a panic, but I already knew I had a light schedule for the day and wouldn’t be giving out many library passes because today’s an advisory day for frosh and sophomores, so I headed over to the front office, remembering that one of our secretaries was out for the day and her counterpart might need a hand.

Half an hour later, I returned to find that one of our paras had graciously stepped up and made a pencil and paper list of passes for juniors and seniors as well as one for a handful of book checkouts.

Low tech? Absolutely. Just as effective in a pinch? You bet!

(more…)

Being a student member of ALA and YALSA I have learned a few things about being a librarian that can’t be taught in school:

1. Being a librarian requires a love of learning that never fades
2. Librarians are innovative, always coming up with new and creative ways to reach teens
3. Librarians love to share their ideas on wikis, blogs, via Twitter and Facebook, at conferences, and in podcasts

It is for all of these reasons that there is nothing else I would rather do than be a librarian. And it is also for these reasons that libraries and librarians really have the opportunity to inspire teens this Teen Tech Week. (more…)

Resources applicable for school and public libraries to celebrate Teen Tech Week this March (7-13) can be found here.

Learn Create Share @ Your Library is the theme for this year’s upcoming Teen Tech Week. New resources and programming ideas can be found on the site as well as previous year’s sites. (more…)

I was doing some research, and I came across the news that Teens Don’t Tweet—as in teens Don’t Use Twitter.  I started clicking through links, and discovered it’s a really hot topic.

(more…)

With major revelations in the Shepard Fairey copyright case hitting the news, image citation and copyright has been on my mind lately.  Maybe I’m a little over-sensitive because I hold a degree in art history, but failure to properly cite images has always been a pet peeve of mine. I cringe when I see students pulling photos and diagrams straight from a Google image search without bothering to find out the source of the image or credit its creator in any way.

But here’s my sad little secret: half the time I’m just as confused as my students when it comes to properly citing.

(more…)

When it comes to the Internet, how many lives do you lead? Yesterday I read Ellyssa Kroski’s article in School Library Journal, about libraries creating policies for staff social media use. Some of the recommendations include showing respect for your colleagues, not spilling organizational secrets, and adhering to your library manual’s code of conduct. Wow, I thought, we could really use something like this. But then I thought about it some more, and I wonder: to what extent can we enforce such a policy? It’s reasonable to monitor library accounts, but what about personal accounts? Here’s where it gets fuzzy.

(more…)

Last night some friends and I were sitting around at dinner, and conversation turned to the recent National Equality March. Don’t recognize the name? You’re not alone–though news organizations report tens of thousands of participants, almost none of us at the table had heard about the march before it happened.

This came as some surprise, as we were a table full of very politically involved women–many of us participated in rallies in the wake of Proposition 8, or phone-banked for marriage equality in Maine and New Hampshire, or stumped for candidates in local elections. And we’d certainly gotten wind of other marches and events in the past, often making sure to mention them well ahead of time at our weekly dinners.

And then it dawned on me: we weren’t on Facebook.

(more…)

I had a conversation with a colleague over Twitter last week that didn’t sit particularly well with me. Her prediction: that soon we’ll have no shared culture at all. Soon we’ll be nothing but pod people.

How depressing! How bleak!

But wait…

Am I already a pod person?

(more…)

Just years ago the Library 2.0 concept rocketed to fame, with libraries across the country adopting user-center practices, policies and content. Library 2.0 encourages libraries to constantly update their services and content to best serve their users. The need to keep services, convenient and user-centered is especially important in teen services where our users are constantly changing themselves. This asks teen librarians to constantly rethink their collection and services, not an easy task.

If you are ready to leap ahead with the next incarnation of library services to teens join us for Libraries 3.0: Teen Edition Institute in Boston. Registration for the institute opens today, October 1st. Participants will hear a speech from teen author and technology blogger Cory Doctorow (via Skype), as well as a thought provoking keynote speech by acting California State Librarian and futurist, Stacey Aldrich. Join in the discussion with librarians Laura Pearle, Wendy Stephens, and Buffy Hamilton as they present “Flip This Library” and rethink your library’s space and services for teens. (more…)