The best place to provide library services for teens may not be in the library

When it comes to library service for teens, the most important words you may hear are “Get out of the library!” For successful teen librarians, outreach is the best and most efficient way to connect with teens.

Think about it. For nine months of the year, most teenagers don’t have time to visit the public library. Every weekday is consumed by seven hours of school, six hours of sleep, plus studying, eating, partying, reading, and arguing with parents. You do the math. Even if teens love your library, how many hours a year can they spend there? Not enough.

So what is our response? A Web site, 24/7 reference, and—if we skip vacations, never get sick, and the stars align—a few school visits each spring to promote our summer reading programs. Is that really the best we can do?

No, actually. We can do a whole lot better by offering programs outside of the library. Schools are an obvious destination, and booktalks are a perfect program. After all, teens are saddled with assignments, papers, and books to read. And with a school program, you’ll interact with hundreds of teens you would never see in the library.

But don’t stop there. Start a book discussion group. Or create a forum to discuss world events or state laws that affect teens, such as the legal age for driving. Go beyond schools and provide arts-and-humanities or science programs at your neighborhood Boys & Girls Club or YMCA. Connect with incarcerated teens in a detention center through literature-based discussions.

Scan your community. Within five miles of your library, you’ll find at least one of the following: a middle school or high school, drug and alcohol aftercare center, corrections facility, youth shelter or group home, or a hospital. All of these places are teeming with teens, and they share one of your library’s most important goals: helping teens become caring, competent adults. If an hour of booktalks, homework help, book discussions, or database searching outside the library furthers that goal, why do we continue to sit behind our desks and wait for kids to come to us?

Perhaps the answer lies in our attitudes. Do we secretly harbor thoughts that are limiting our effectiveness? For example, do we believe that if teens need a book, they’ll make it a priority to visit the library? Or if their parents were living right, they would bring their kids to the library? Or maybe we think we don’t have time to reach out. Or that providing outside services will devalue what we do inside the library.

What would a business do if its customers couldn’t come to its store? Trust me, retailers wouldn’t say, “We have to cover the desk.” They would look at their customers and figure out the best way to reach them. Likewise, it’s time for us to load up our wares, take them to the people, and start selling.

After working in libraries for eight years, I still don’t understand why we are so slow to grasp this concept. It’s not a matter of outreach being “extra”—its the crux of a teen librarian’s gig. We should encourage each other to make outreach our number-one goal, and not just something we do when we have some free time or the spirit moves us.

Try this: for one week, add up all the hours you spend in meetings and at the service desk during school hours. Now, keep track of all the teenagers you serve during those hours. Is it less than 25? Guess what… in two class periods at a school you could have helped twice that number. If your job description includes the phrase “provide service to teens,” then I mean this in the nicest way possible: “Get out of the library!”