WLS Teens

Non-Fiction Section Poll

We're trying to get a feel for how many libraries in the system have their own separate YA non-fiction section and how many integrate their YA NF with Adult non-fiction-- Also, does anyone have fiction only YA sections?

Please send me an email & let me know how you're YA section is set-up.  Thanks everyone!

Erin Schirota
Bronxville

esenig@westchesterlibraries.org

Fantastic Teen Room Chairs

At Tuckahoe we just got new chairs for our teen area and the kids love them! (One girl asked if she could borrow one...for a month.)

After seeing the link posted on a listserv, I was taken by the fact that these chairs from Sauder (Two and Three Position Chairs) were designed to do what the kids were always doing - leaning back. Leaning back on our old chairs caused them to start coming apart and they needed re-gluing all the time. The new chairs also lean forward for those intense homework sessions around the table. The kids are thrilled, I no longer have to remind them not to lean back in their chairs, and the chairs are guaranteed for 10 years, so we look foward to having them for a good long time. They even fit our rather modest budget at $132 per chair (that's a special library price) and as we're a library the shipping was free.

We asked for samples of the wood finishes and fabrics and Sauder provided them. The new chairs fit in well with our current teen room decor.

So the kids are thrilled, we're thrilled and I couldn't help but pass this information on.

- Nancy Kunz, TUK

Teen Spaces

The PowerPoint presentation that shows various teen spaces at the Phoenix Public Library is now available. There are two versions of the presentation available:

• Photos of the teen spaces with no explanatory text
• Photos with text that describes some of the philosophy behind the how, why, and what of developing library teen spaces

Serving Teens - Assets, Behavior, Spaces

At today's WLS Teen Services meeting we had a good discussion about the ways in which libraries support healthy teen development via the programs, services, and spaces they provide.  We looked at the Developmental Assets - created by the Search Institute - and talked about exactly what libraries do for teens that help support the assets. The list created by the group is available here.

I stressed a few things about the assets over and over again. First, the assets provide teen librarians with a framework for the services they provide and they also provide language for articulating the importance of what teen librarians try to accomplish with and for teens in libraries.  As I mentioned in the meeting, librarians serving teens can include the developmental assets as reasons for why they  create specific programs, services, and collections. For example, one can look at the assets and find that providing a separate space for teens meets many of the items on the list - support, boundaries and expectations, social competencies, and more. I have had great success selling programs and services to administrators by putting them within the assets framework.

At the meeting I also distributed a handout that provides some guidelines for handling problems in teen_behavior. The sheet can be effectively used with all staff members as a jumping off point for talking about teen behaviors and as a way to help staff understand how to successfully work with teens.

Another handout included questions to ask when analyzing the library's teen space. These questions serve as a launching point for helping librarians determine what they are already doing successfully with teen space and how they might make changes and improvements.