Tuned-in Teenagers

Multimedia loomed large during Teen Tech Week (TTW), the March 2–8 event sponsored by the Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA).

With a theme of “Tune In @ Your Library,” this year’s celebration, the second of its kind, reminded teens that the library can be a great hybrid of the technology that they love—and the resources that they need.

Public and school libraries nationwide encouraged local youth to visit the library for TTW activities such as filmmaking and songwriting, as well as to help plan and create some of the events themselves—spurring young people to feel some ownership of the occasion. For example, Frances Jacobson Harris, librarian at University Laboratory High School at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and TTW committee member, brought in TTW poster mock-ups for her students’ opinion. “Teens don’t want to be talked to or preached to,” she says. “So when we started getting [final] materials, they were really excited to see the one they picked was chosen. They felt involved.”

YALSA encouraged librarians and media specialists to devise their own activities, enticing them with 20 mini-grants of $450, plus $50 in promotional goods, to help jump-start their ideas. Winners included a Battle of the Bands and a video shoot for teens, by teens. Kim Banks wrote that winning grant, netting a video camera, editing software, and other supplies so her teen patrons could shoot a video about cool things at the library. “It’s like a VH1 top ten countdown,” says Banks, a teen librarian assistant for the La Habra (CA) Public Library.

At the Bluford branch of the Kansas City Public Library (KCPL), teens were treated to an evening “Lock-In.” They got the run of the place, with unlimited use of computers and video-gaming equipment and danced and jammed to Guitar Hero and Karaoke Revolution. “Our library doesn’t have a teen space,” says Stephanie Iser, chair of this year’s TTW and a children’s and teen librarian at Bluford. “This lock-in truly gave them the chance to take over the library.”

However, certain limitations, such as Web filters, can make it difficult for students to access certain sites from their school library—or participate in this year’s TTW song contest. Showcasing these entries on YouTube or another social site would have been ideal, but access is blocked in many schools. To work around that, YALSA encouraged participants to upload their entries directly to its site.

“It can be often a stretch to connect libraries to teens,” says Harris. “So we’re trying to meet teens where they are.” That can also include reaching out to kids within the virtual environment Teen Second Life. Some libraries have even opened branches there.

For its part, the Eagle Valley (CO) Library District wanted to expand their TTW efforts, which last year involved a scavenger hunt and some database training. Thanks to a YALSA mini-grant won this year, Eagle Valley’s Julie Richards, a teen services librarian, hired singer/songwriter Kathy Moser, who had worked with the library before, to visit all three of its district branches. There Moser taught youth how to write and record their own music and sent them home with their own CD.

“She’s a big, big hit with the kids,” says Richards of Moser. But will the program keep them coming back to the library? “We’ll have to wait and see. After all, these are teenagers.”