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.) Listen

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. But, they do know that. These teens are thinking human beings and not just walking mindless creatures.

How did these teens get to be thinking human beings and know how to make choices? As I listened it seemed pretty clear that, to at least some degree, their critical thinking skills came from the adults in their lives. At one point Abby asked her guests whether or not access to social networking should be blocked by parents of young children and teens. The answers from her guests mostly focused on the idea that the best thing parents can do for their children is be aware of what is going on in their children’s lives and talk with their children about appropriate and inappropriate use of technology.

The teens discussing the topic seemed to have had experience with parents who were willing to converse about various aspects of their lives and technology use. These teens had good modeling from their parents, and perhaps other adults in their lives, and as a result were smart users of technology.

I think about the need to talk with teens about smart choices and safe use of technology every time I hear about a school or public library blocking access to many of the sites that teens like to use. If your school or public library is in the blocking frame of mind, consider promoting listening to Abby’s Road to parents, teachers, colleagues, and administrators. Consider facilitating a discussion among members of your community about teen perspectives on technology use and how, through open conversation with teens in the community, adults can learn what’s really going on in that use, and also help teens to be safe when it comes to their technology lives.

Talking with teens can be risky. But if the adults who live and work with teens don’t have those risky conversations who will? And, if the adults who live and work with teens don’t have the conversations, how can teens be expected to critically think about their options in order to make good decisions about their lives?

Adults need to realize that teens can think for themselves and at the same time they have to help teens gain the skills to successfully do that. Critical thinking comes with discussion and practice. Adults can’t be afraid to talk, on a wide variety of topics, with teens about decision making and they can’t be afraid to give teens the chance to practice that decision making. It’s really the only way adults can help teens grow up to successfully live in a world where making choices is something they need to do every day.

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!

Technology is absolutely woven into my daily life. I spend most of the day at work in front of a computer, whether I’m checking the library’s Google calendar or renewing a book or asking colleagues reader’s advisory questions via Twitter. But the more I think about it, the more I realize I still have a lot of low-tech tasks in my life–for better and for worse.

On the annoying-but-perhaps-necessary side, there are things like hall passes (written by hand) and purchase orders (multiple carbons for each order).

But then there are the helpful things–notes to myself, post-its on books or magazines I leave in teacher mailboxes, handwritten lists of call numbers when I’m pulling reserve items, a bulletin board with clippings from school sporting events or plays.

Could I be using technology for these tasks?

Sure, I could use email or Google docs to leave notes for myself. I could send emails to teachers instead of using post-its. I could print out call number ranges and write about recent events on the library blog instead of sitting at the paper cutter in the morning and carefully stapling football articles to construction paper.

But do I really want technology for these tasks?

So often we engage in the Big Picture debates when it comes to technology and libraries. How do print books stack up to e-readers? What role does social networking play in learning and teaching? Do teens need libraries to be full of shelves or monitors?

But the big picture is made up of so many little pictures. By saving ourselves time and energy, are we losing out on face time with colleagues–or teens? I communicate with teachers a lot by phone or email, but I’m thrilled when they come down to the library in person. Just yesterday one came by to say she’d read my interview in the student paper and thought I might be interested in a movie that mentions The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter. How much nicer to get a DVD handed to me than an email suggesting I add it to my Netflix queue!

So what low-tech tasks are still a part of your daily life? Which ones do you treasure, and what kind of carbon copies do you wish would catch up to the times?

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.

We on the Teen Tech Week committee have been doing our best to provide librarians with the tools necessary to make this Teen Tech Week successful. However, in keeping with what librarians do best, we want to encourage all of you to share your programming ideas on the Teen Tech Week 2010 Wiki so other librarians can learn from them and use them to engage with and encourage the teens in their communities to Learn Create Share this Teen Tech Week. These can be programs you’ve done throughout the year that were successful or programs you are planning to try during Teen Tech Week. You can also post your thoughts and ideas for promoting Teen Tech week.

Don’t forget to register for Teen Teen Tech Week 2010. Doing so will give you access to this year’s awesome logo.

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.

Your own ideas are encouraged to be added to YALSA’s wiki for Teen Tech Week. The more we can all contribute, chances are the ideas will reflect the diversity of resources and creativity of ideas we all have.

Don’t forget to register for Teen Tech Week which allows you access to the fun and inspiring logo!

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.

The story seemed to take on life back in July 2009 when Morgan Stanley Research Europe asked a fifteen year old summer intern, Matthew Robson, to write a research “note” describing how teens consume media.  Company executives found his insights valuable enough to print and distribute to their clients, which in turn caused a stir in the marketplace:  Twitter is not for teens, Morgan Stanley told by 15-year-old expert, How Teenagers Consume Media: the report that shook the City, 15-Year Old Analyst Trashes TV, Newspapers, Radio, and …Twitter. Robson succinctly pointed out that teens don’t Tweet because “they realise that no one is viewing their profile, so their Tweets are pointless,” and that Twitter is strictly for the elderly!

In August 2009, Twitter co-founder, Biz Stone,  reacted to a similar report published in the New York Times, “Who’s Driving Twitter’s Popularity? Not Teens,” saying the company was not worried by the talk of teens shunning Twitter. He also noted that adults are more apt to eventually be willing to pay for Twitter services if they use it in a professional capacity, whereas teens are not likely to part with their money as easily.

Finally just days ago at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco, a group of teens took the stage and displayed a “visceral dislike” of Twitter when questioned about new technologies:

“ ‘If I were using Twitter, I would just say I’m sitting on a couch in front of a bunch of people,’ one teen said, and it was clear he couldn’t fathom why he would do that.”

As someone who doesn’t have a Twitter account, as I agree that it seems pointless, I had always assumed teens were as enamoured with it as Facebook.  Apparently I was wrong.  If you check out some of the links you’ll find some interesting theories on why teens live to text, but won’t touch Twitter.  For those of you who do Tweet, have you tried it with your teens?  Has anyone had any success in using it to promote events or library programs?

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.

At a recent conference I was excited about a session on copyright for school librarians, but what looked like a solid overview was quickly derailed by very specific audience questions, so we never even got to the slide on images.  What’s a well-meaning librarian to do?

There’s Creative Commons, of course, which I think offers very clear explanations of copyright and terms of use–and is a great place to send teens when they want to find images. If you want cover images for your library blog (and who doesn’t?) you can easily obtain a developer key from LibraryThing and pretty much use CoverThing to your heart’s content.

But what about when you’ve found the absolutely perfect image online, and you’re not sure if you can use it?

This morning I’ve been hunting for propaganda images for a US History class coming into the library this week, and I came across a fantastic slide show from Life Magazine.  I immediately tried to track down citation information–I think it’s irresponsible to point my students to resources without knowing if or how they can be cited–but what I found was a pretty dense terms of use page geared toward commercial reproduction.

Luckily for me, Getty Images offers free online chat with their licensing experts. (Hi, Brad!) I quickly learned that images can be cited by photographer/artist and Getty Images, and that printing costs money–unless you print just the preview image with a Getty watermark, which is free.

Success! I found a great resource for my students, I got over my fear of feeling dumb and asked someone for help, and now I have very clear image use and citation guidelines for Getty Images–not to mention a very positive customer service experience online.

What’s your favorite story about copyright or a resource you love for images online?

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.

So, how many lives do you lead? Do you have a personal Twitter account and a professional one? What about Facebook? I’ve been struggling with the split-personality thing for a long time. I’ve chosen to have one account for both work and play. It’s just too hard to separate the two. We spend at least 40 hours a week at work, and a lot more than that thinking about work–it’s natural we want to talk about it with our peers. And, I feel like I’ve made solid connections with colleagues I might not have made if it weren’t for Twitter or Facebook. There’s nothing better than bonding over Glee or getting a photographic glimpse into the rich lives of your YALSA committee members.  But there’s always a trade off. Had a bad day at work? Need to let off steam? Maybe it feels right to vent in your Facebook status or make jokes about it on Twitter, but you never know who will see it. Even private profiles have a way of making it to very person you’d hoped would never see it.

But isn’t that the point of a social media policy–to discourage staff from such faux pas? I’m all for that, but don’t we deserve to have a private Web life (i.e. access by approved friends only) that also includes friends from work? And how would a social media policy fit into that? I like the idea of guidelines, and I hope that everyone would behave professionally. But one person’s idea of good judgment would make another person gasp in horror.

What to do?

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.

All of my previous interactions with the kinds of groups that rally together for events like National Equality March happened on Facebook, but I recently deactivated my account. (Long story.) The other women at the table either don’t check their accounts regularly (and probably haven’t joined any groups or become fans of pages that would send them alerts) or never signed up in the first place.

It’s a sobering thought to realize you might miss an important event if the bulk of the organizing and promotion takes place on a social networking site you don’t use. And for many of us working in libraries, moments like these should be a wake-up call: if your district, school or branch prohibits social networking use, you’re missing out.

We talk a lot about which social networks teens are using and how you and colleagues can make sites like Twitter and Facebook part of your personal learning networks, but what about the ways we’re cutting ourselves off from the fabulous work other people are doing when we opt out of (or were never allowed to opt into) social networks?

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?

The idea that the rise of social media actually means an end to shared culture is a bit counter-intuitive to me. Blogs, social networks and other multimedia tools (dare I say communities?) have made me feel closer to people around the country and around the world than I could have imagined before these tools were such an important part of my daily life. Blogs in particular have even helped me branch out in in the “real” world. I’ve made personal and professional contacts on the internet that may never have happened without it.

But the idea that seeking out like-minded folks on the internet could have a deleterious effect on local culture and communities has given me pause.

While it’s true that many of the blogs I follow shed light on folks who might be at the opposite end of the political spectrum, I’m not seeking these people out directly. And the same is more or less true of Twitter–I hear about, say, people who devalue libraries, or don’t believe in school librarians, or believe technology is nothing but a blight for teens and learning… but I don’t follow those people.

The question, then, is this: by seeking out like minds, whether it’s through Twitter or a regional listserv, are we overlooking community partnerships at home? As with most either/or situations I would hope this isn’t a true either/or–but are we really expanding the boundaries of the conversation, or using a megaphone to talk to a bigger herd of sheep?

I’m thrilled, for instance, that my state school library association has a cadre of active Twitter users updating the world at large about our annual conference (#msla2009, or #msla09 for the rebels who want to save characters), but are those tweets just bouncing around in an echo chamber of other librarians?

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.

To get inspired for Libraries 3.0: Teen Edition and start thinking about just how fast the world is changing watch the video below. “Did You Know” is the newest video from the “Shift Happens” project. Come to Libraries 3.0: Teen Edition and help your library stay relevant to teens in a world that is constantly changing, getting faster and more mobile.