Flipped!: Want to get teens excited about summer reading? Just add video.

Jennifer Wooten All photos by Meryl Schenker

Sound familiar? Like it or not, YouTube looms large in teens’ lives. Fully 57 percent of youth online watch videos, according to a Pew Internet & American Life study. And more and more are creating and sharing clips of their own making. With online engagement such an integral part of their world, Washington state’s King County Library System (KCLS) decided to meet kids on their own turf by launching Read.Flip.Win., a video component of its summer reading program for teens.

Summer reading initiatives are core services at many public libraries and KCLS is no exception. Our program, “Read Three, Get One Free” in which teens write three reviews and receive a complimentary book, has been a successful one. But in 2008, we decided to ramp things up with Read.Flip.Win. (RFW). We invited teens to create and submit their own video book review or a trailer promoting a title, much like a feature film. “Flip,” of course, refers to the popular point-and-shoot camcorder of the same name, two of which were offered as prizes for our contest winners.

As with any new program, we weren’t sure what kind of response we would get. We knew teens were online—a lot—but we weren’t sure if this would translate into submissions to our contest. We hoped for five entries and thought 10 would be spectacular. In the end, we received a whopping 38 entries.

But prior to getting all those submissions, we had to work hard to create this new program from scratch. With any new initiative, getting the word out is oftentimes the hardest part. So from the beginning, I knew communication was critical, but a particular challenge for a large library system. At KCLS, our 44 branches are spread across a huge, diverse county, from the Redmond Regional library which serves 51,530 residents in the city that is home to Microsoft, to the Skykomish branch, a small mountain town (pop. 207) known for kayaking.

With in-person staff meetings less than practical, we turned to online tools that fostered both communication and collaboration—blogs and wikis. Fortunately, we had a staff wiki already in place, so we created a page on it devoted to RFW, providing all the details, everything from contest rules to instructions on how to submit videos. This transparency allowed staff to see the program as it was developing and encouraged their input. For example, our stated rules originally had teens uploading their contest submissions to their YouTube accounts. But one of our librarians, via the wiki, advised us that kids under 13 were prohibited from opening their own accounts. So we set up a library YouTube page for teens to use instead, with the help of their local teen librarian.

Our staff blog also came in handy. For example, one week before the contest began, I used it to post a reminder to staff about the upcoming event and referred them to the wiki page if they had questions.

Adrienne Dunham with collage work from her winning video.

After spreading the word about the program, we thought: Now what? Kids seemed up for participating, according to librarians who visited the schools. And we had secured great prizes: Flip camcorders and MuVo MP3 players for winners and runners-up in both categories, courtesy of the KCLS Foundation, a nonprofit organization that funds library initiatives.

Still, we weren’t sure what to expect in terms of how teens would execute their projects or what kinds of videos they would produce. From the beginning, I was concerned that some young patrons might not have access to video equipment (sophisticated or otherwise). So, tapping into KCLS’s online services budget, we purchased some Flip camcorders so some branches could host video shoot events where teens could work on their projects. While this was a good idea, in practice, it didn’t work so well. Most branches reported low or no attendance at these events. For one, a single two-hour event is not enough time to create and edit a video.

But mainly, we realized, kids simply didn’t need our help. This was evident as soon as the entries started coming in, revealing the comfort level teens had with the medium. Beyond technical proficiency, the videos impressed us with their creativity and enthusiasm for the books. In one entry, two girls consider the high—and low—points of the novel Twilight in a spirited debate that would have made Ebert & Roeper proud.

Ryan Lee, 15 created The Odyssey, a video trailer for Homer's epic poem,  using clip art and software.

For some of us, the goal of library programming may be to simply get kids into the library, while others strive to serve existing patrons. The idea behind our contest was a bit of both. We know that many teens in our community see the library as just a place to sit and read or study after school and the last place they’d think of to engage in technology. We librarians know differently and consistently strive to alter this misconception.

So, did our program succeed? Well, let me say that our greatest satisfaction came from seeing teens participate in the contest who were not prior library users. Michael Fishman, a senior at Mercer Island High School, a runner up for his Fahrenheit 451 video, was one such kid. Michael, who describes himself as “not much of a reader,” heard about RFW from a friend who is a library volunteer. “I love film, and I try to find any way to showcase it and earn some dough or a prize in the process,” he says. Since last summer’s contest, Michael has begun attending our teen advisory board meetings and is now a more regular patron.

The bottom line? Joining reading with an opportunity for creative expression got teens excited about the library and books. As one of our judges, Rick Orsillo, a librarian at the Shoreline branch, says, “RFW makes teens examine the books they choose. Because they have to focus on creating the elements of a movie, such as scripts, sets, costumes, etc., they’re forced to wrestle aspects of the story they may not otherwise consciously examine….” Getting teens to think about books in a new way—I consider that a huge success.