The workshop was presented by Jamie Watson.
Strategic Planning, Vision, and Mission: One of the first things we discussed is the need for teen services and in particular those librarians serving teens to determine or know what their libraries' mission, vision, and strategic plans for teen services. We all thought about, dictated, and shared our mission/vision. This is something I had thought about, but had never thought about and wrote. This is what I personally come up, but everyone's is different depending upon the library, position, and services offered:
"My personal mission/vision is to ensure that every teen that walks through the library dooes will be treated with respect and will have their information and reading needs asked about and fulfilled in the best and most courteous way possible. My mission is to encourage and embolden teens to develop and share their love of reading and writing, and for those who fo have these, foster a newfound passion for something they can relate to and/or believ in. And, it is important for me to provide a safe, social outlet as a way to seek out help, and mentoring in the community." As Jamie noted, it is very important to have your "elevator speech" ready when someone has a question about what you do whether it is a parent, teacher, stranger, or even possible community partner.
We went on to contemplate the things we felt that we are strong in in teen services and where we have weaknesses. Jamie noted that it important to find out each others' strengths and weaknesses so that we can help others and in turn be helped when we need it.
In the afternoon, we examined the 50 Best Young Adult Books and the 50 Best of the 21st century. What would be your 50 best Young Adult books? What criteria would you use to create the list?
In addition, we discussed the Printz award books and the criteria. We also held a discussion on whether or not we agreed with those who have won the award in the past and why or why not. Jamie is on this coming year's Printz committee. Suggestions for books to be concerned can be submitted via the YALSA website.
Then Jamie posed two intriguing questions to us. 1) If you could only have 10 books in your teen section, what would they be? 2) When you have a reluctant reader who comes in and gives you no clues about anything he/she may be interested in, what is your one go to book? Please feel free to comment and share your suggestions!
Lastly, we had a discussion about teen library programming in which we all shared things that we are currently featuring or have featured for teens. Some of the neat ideas featured were:
classic board game nights
Teen Idols
American Guitar Hero Contest
Teen and Tween nights once a month
Mother/Daughter yoga
Animae/Manga
Mother/Daughter Book Clubs
Jamie also shared with us some very notable technology statistics that she found throught the Pew Research Internet Project:
- 97% of teens play video games
- 75% of teens have cell phones
- 75% of online teens have created content for the internet
Lots of information was also shared about YALSA. To get more information about their organization or booklists go to www.ala.org/yalsa
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