YALSA, Your Work Isn’t Over

Too many unruly teens? No problem. Just close the library.

By Brian Kenney, Editor-in-Chief -- School Library Journal, 2/1/2007

It’s the perfect library.

You know the place. The books are always in order and never get defaced. No unruly kids wait in line to use the computers. No “inappropriate content” suddenly pops up on monitors. Hard drives remain virus-free. Printers don’t jam. Quiet reigns.

And even the plumbing in the boy’s room never gets clogged.

How can that be possible? It’s simple: don’t unlock the doors.

As any good librarian will tell you, the idea is simply absurd. After all, it’s the children and teens, teachers and parents—and the energy and challenges they bring—that make a librarian’s job so worthwhile. But let’s face it, on some rough afternoons, this fantasy can look pretty appealing.

Apparently, the board of trustees of New Jersey’s Maplewood Public Library would agree. Faced with a history of unruly middle school students, they decided back in December that the only way to handle the situation was to shut down both branches of the library from 2:45 p.m. to 5 p.m. (when they would then reopen, presumably youth-free).

What were these 12- to 14-year-olds up to? Congregating, socializing, not using library resources, talking loudly, and fighting. Board Vice President Karen Pettis told Library Hotline, one of SLJ’s sister publications, that “we’ve done everything possible within our arsenal,” including hiring after-school monitors, bringing in consultants, and creating a teen advisory group.

I’m not saying that large numbers of middle school kids aren’t a challenge. But Maplewood has set the bar pretty high. The library’s behavior policy (www.maplewoodlibrary.org) defines the library as a “place for reading, study, and research.” That’s it. Prohibited activities are many and include craft making, tapping, humming, and “easily-overheard talking.” Oliver Twist’s workhouse was more child-friendly.

What’s going on here? It’s hard to say, since Maplewood’s librarians won’t talk. But I’m hardly the only one who was shocked. The decision rated a front-page story in the New York Times, eliciting a firestorm of criticism and heated community and national discussions.

By mid-January, the situation had resolved itself. The town’s mayor allocated some $220,000 to expand an after-school program in a church, keep the middle school’s gym open beyond the school day, and hire consultants to develop alternatives to the library. The library will now remain open. And a library board that was willing to demonize its own teens in the national press has found another way to keep kids out of the library.

But this solution is just wrong. If there is anything we’ve learned from the history of the Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA), it’s that teens belong in the library (see “John, Paul, George, and YALSA,” pp. 34–37). The library’s job? Create effective out-of-school programs that will engage teens—and not find ways to deflect them.

For starters, the library trustees should have argued to keep the $220,000 and shouldn’t have dispersed it across the community. They could hire a young adult librarian (or add a second, if one is already on staff). With WiFi already in both branches, they could purchase laptop carts and open the meeting rooms to technology programming. They could have a manga artist-in-residence. They could host gaming events. The possibilities are as vast as their teens’ interests.

Keep the gym open longer hours? I don’t think so. In Maplewood, it doesn’t sound like the teens are the unruly ones. It’s the adults.