Have you ever noticed the number of posts on Twitter, or Facebook, or blogs that pose the question, Do teens….? This could be: Do teens use Twitter, Do teens still use Facebook, Do teens use Tumblr, Do teens read horror, Do teens eat peanut butter? These questions have started to annoy me because while I value connecting to a professional learning network as much as the next library staff member serving teens (I really do), I think that instead of asking everyone in the world about teens generally, we should connect directly with teens in our own communities and ask them how they are spending their time, what technology they use, what they like to read, and so on. Sure, the teen library staff member in the next town over, or across the country, might have some insight on what teens like, dislike, and how they spend their time But, she probably does not know the specifics of your community that can make something the most or least popular thing around for the teens that you work with.

I understand that if we glom all teens into a group that it makes understanding them and providing services easier. And, I also understand that sometimes generalizations work. It’s also true that research that focuses on teens as a group, such as that just published by the Pew Internet & American Life Project on Teens, Social Media and Privacy can be really useful and help to set a foundation for the work done with the age group in libraries. But, what I worry about is that some library staff working with teens use the generalizations and what works in one community as the foundation for what they do for/with teens in their own community without ever talking with teens in their locale directly. And, as a result, miss opportunities for creating services that are personalized and customized and just right for that specific community’s teens.
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Do you sometimes wonder what you could do to get more administrative support for teen services in your library? There are some relatively simple steps you can take to win friends and influence managers! This is a six-part series that shares some tips from managers that you can integrate into your work life and maybe make some positive changes in your library.

In the first two weeks, I talked about presenting yourself as a professional and about speaking the language. This week I’m going to get even more practical and talk about:

Collecting Data

As I noted last week, teen librarians can sometimes get too focused on the teen point of view: we think it should be obvious that teens need our services, collections, and programs, because they’re important for the teens. But your manager needs to know more than that. Your manager needs to know the value of the services, programs, and collections that the library is providing, and whether the money allocated to teen services is well spent. (more…)

Title: Face Juggler

Platform: Compatible with iPhone 3GS, but optimized on iPhone 5 and requires iOS 5.0 or later

Cost: Free

I first stumbled across this app when I heard a couple of co-workers giggling about something at work. When I wandered over to their desks, I was overcome with laughter to see a picture of two co-workers with their faces swapped onto each other’s bodies. You can’t help but want to try it yourself with every single picture of family and friends you can get your hands on. So that’s just what I did. I quickly downloaded the app and here’s what I found:

When I launched the app I was faced with two decisions: first, I could take a shot or second, I could choose a photo from my camera roll. If you choose the first, the app launches the camera for your convenience and allows you to easily snap away. If you’re like me and you want to swap faces using your formal wedding pictures that are saved in your phone, you would want the latter option to “choose photo.” Once you have taken your photo or made your selection, hit the button “Juggle” and the screen will flash “prepare to be juggled.” A few moments later, it’s time for the big reveal and your newly juggled faces appear on the screen. Everything in the photo remains the same except the faces, which is the most hilarious part. (more…)

It’s happened, YALSA’s three virtual town halls on the future of libraries and teens that are a part of the year-long National Forum on Libraries and Teens have all taken place. The first event in March was all about libraries and partnerships. You can view the archive. The second event in April focused on informal and formal teen learning spaces. You can view that recording too. Today, the third event took place. It focused broadly on the future of libraries and teens. You can view that recording as well. (We apologize that the final recording is missing the first few minutes of audio.)

In today’s virtual town hall participants were asked to imagine their ideal library services. What did participants talk about? Ideal library services would: (more…)

There are three basic ways to incorporate religion into teen programming: collaborate with religious organizations, outreach programming at a religious event or location, and programming with a religious theme.   By the end of this post, you should feel empowered to take these best practices into your own programming, and to your coworkers.

Just like the civic groups libraries frequently collaborate with (Kiwanis, United Way, schools, etc.), religious organizations have what libraries desire most in our programming: people.  When you collaborate with a religious organization, you’ve automatically got an audience, who you can now market to more effectively, and, if you’ve planned your program well, participation in the collaborative effort will be natural.  By opening the library to collaborations with religious institutions, you also gain access to additional funding—either monetary in nature or in volunteer hours.  Collaborations with religious organizations help the library expand services to a greater number of its patrons than it could have done on its own.
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Religion is commonly grouped with politics as a topic libraries avoid programming with, bypass in reference interviews, and circumlocute in collection development.  Treating religion this way is a disservice to our teens as well as other library patrons.  Religion is intrinsic to our patrons’ lives; every individual — even those who do not opt in to religious observance — has a religious life.  Religion informs our news, culture, education, and community life.  No library is exempt from this; every library has religious patrons.  A Facebook graph search is a simple way to test this assertion. (more…)

A weekly short list of tweets that librarians and the teens that they serve may find interesting.

Do you have a favorite Tweet from the past week? If so add it in the comments for this post. Or, if you read a Twitter post between May 10 and May 16 that you think is a must for the next Tweets of the Week send a direct or @ message to lbraun2000 on Twitter.
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I am enjoying the “Day in the Life” series and thought it would be interesting to write a post from my perspective. I started in public libraries as a Children’s and YA librarian for a small system, then became the Teen Coordinator for a larger system, did some partnerships and development work for a bunch of years in that same system, then managed a library building and now coordinate services to children, youth and families in a large urban/suburban library system. This day actually happened on Monday, May 6th.

8:25 – 8:50 Arrived at work and approved timesheets. Couldn’t remember the password to open the computer-controlled shades in my office so squinted into the sun.

8:50 – 9:30 Met with Senior Librarian in our Information Services section about updates that have been long needed to the Youth Services portal, the section on our staff intranet that includes too many separate lists we have to keep up, lots of duplication of information that is in other places, and other valuable stuff we could put in a different order. We developed a joint list of the easy parts and she will lead a conversation with the Youth Services Management Team about how to best organize the rest of the stuff. Our conversation was in the context of knowing that our County will be moving to a new platform later this year and we will need to migrate to a new platform.
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Recently I was talking with library staff that work with youth and heard “Maker spaces are dead.” With an amazed look on my face, and since I know that many libraries are still developing these types of spaces, I said, “What?” And, it was repeated, “Maker spaces are dead.” The person who stated this was actually repeating something heard at another meeting. So, I contacted someone else I knew that was at that meeting and she confirmed. She’d heard that too – the idea was that in a few years the whole maker/DIY movement in libraries was going to be dead. Say by 2016.

This really bothered me, and at first I couldn’t figure out why. Then it came to me. People are missing the big picture here. Maker spaces aren’t about the space or the equipment in those spaces. They are really about a philosophy of service related to libraries and the community. Libraries and youth. Libraries and teens.
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“The greatest service which can be rendered to any country is to add a useful plant to its culture…” –Thomas Jefferson; Memorandum of Services to My Country, after 2 September 1800

You may have heard a lot of talk lately about seed libraries. In February, NPR ran a story entitled “How to Save a Public Library: Make it a Seed Bank.”  If we put aside the argument over whether or not public libraries need to be saved, this story actually highlighted an interesting movement that has been sweeping across the country and libraries are leading the way.

A seed lending library works on the simple principle that you can ‘lend’ out seeds to be grown by patrons who will then harvest new seeds and return them to the seed library to be lent out again.

Hosting a seed library can help you connect, create, and collaborate with your community, and especially with your teens.

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