Teen Read Week and Teen Tech Week have done a great job of getting the word out about two specific areas of teen services. But feedback from these two celebrations demonstrates that there are needs of the community that are not being met. One of these needs is that for nearly a decade members have been asking for more examples of low-cost and no-cost programming that works with these and other topics for teen services. Another is to create more awareness and advocacy opportunities for teen services.
To meet these needs, this board doc offers a re-envisioning of TRW and TTW. It offers several options for thinking about the role TRW and TTW serve for YALSA members. One option is to combine TRW and TTW into one month long celebration of teen services, as a public awareness campaign to raise awareness about the value of teen services. The document outlines modeling it in part on the Lights on Afterschool celebration. It also emphasizes the importance of selecting a month that supports school and public libraries can celebrate. The month long celebration offers flexible participation, opportunities to try new things with the longer celebration time, and structure for celebrating in a way that best fits each libraries needs. It broadens the focus to cover all areas of teen services so that you can customize for your community and your teens.
Along with this month long celebration, the document also focuses on implementing teen services and programs year-round teen programs and services. This will support library staff in all sizes of libraries to more easily support teens in the library, no matter what their staffing situation.
For more information check out board document #32 located here! Have questions? Post your comments here!
Crystle Martin, YALSA Secretary, 2017-2018 President-Elect
