Editorial: A Teen Library Grows in Queens
Too many young adults? Try giving them a library of their own
By Brian Kenney, Editor-in-Chief -- School Library Journal, 7/1/2008
bout 18 months ago, I wrote an editorial (“YALSA, Your Work Isn’t Over,” February 2007, p. 11) that generated a lot of criticism, both positive and negative. At that time, a public library in New Jersey was faced with too many unruly middle school students. After a number of attempts to mitigate the situation, the library board decided that the only solution was to close the institution on weekdays from 2:45 to 5 p.m.
This decision didn’t last too long—who knows, it could’ve just been political posturing—and soon the mayor miraculously came up with the funds to create more after-school programs, thus keeping the notorious miscreants out of the library.
There was so much wrong with that story that I hardly knew where to begin. But once I got past the sheer audacity of the library’s decision, I realized I was, as my mother liked to say when I was a kid, “disappointed.” I was disappointed in the library’s lack of imagination, in its inability to creatively find ways to work with today’s kids, and in its failure to successfully reinterpret the library for a new generation.
This sorry situation came back to me last month when I was out in one of the tougher neighborhoods in Queens—Far Rockaway, to be exact—and came across something that made me stop short: a recently refurbished storefront with a sign that read “Queens Library for Teens.” When was the last time you ever passed by a library just for teens?
I wasn’t sure what was going on here, but it was certainly interesting. It turns out that the Queens Library in Far Rockaway had a predicament many libraries across the country are facing: way too many teens in too small a space, with all the ensuing challenges this presents.
But instead of ratcheting up their rules and regulations so that they could be justified in throwing out nearly any kid, or limiting teen activities to book borrowing and study hall, they did the opposite. They created—quite literally—a library in which teens were welcome (see “Make It New,” pp. 38–42).
The Library for Teens is by no means perfect—Queens’s administrators readily admit that the best solution would be to enlarge the Far Rockaway branch (a process that would take years). And it is also certain to be controversial, especially in its staffing.
Let’s face it. It would’ve been a whole lot easier to say: “We can’t serve teens well because we don’t have the space,” “we don’t’ have the staff,” or “we can’t find the funds.” What would be lost? Just a generation or two of young people.
But in Queens, they believe that the library has a responsibility to young adults, that the library can have a positive impact on their lives. And they’re not afraid of being innovative to make certain that teens find a home in the library.
It sure beats closing between 2:45 and 5 p.m.
