The Teen Third Space

My final session was The Teen Third Space. There were 3 speakers during this panel, two talked about teen spaces in libraries and the third spoke about having a teen webpage separate from the library website and catalog. Here is a link to the handouts--it is a word doc, so don't be surprised when it asks you if you want to open it.

Kimberly Bolan is a facilities planning and design consultant and has published a book displaying her design triumphs. She is also a librarian with 20 years of experience. She went into the history of the idea of a "third place" and summarized it as being a social surrounding separate from home and work or school, as well as an environment that facilitates community building. She argued that creating a comfortable teen space increases use of all our services, which is always desirable. In order to get teen input, she recommends showing teens the options, rather than saying "you want [this], don't you?" (Hmm, reference interview anyone?) A couple of the things she says makes teens happy in a space are food and drink and a variety of furniture.

Anthony Bernier is an assistant professor at San Jose State University. His presentation was called, "Why Bean Bags 'Bite:' YA Seating." Obviously not a big fan of the bean bag chair, not only because they are messy and get smelly, but because teens don't like them and they are uncomfortable. He have 4 "rules" for choosing teen area furniture:

1. Maximize Options
2. Mix and Don't Match
3. Offer Movement
4. Explore the Floor

What this comes to, is offer a variety and don't make teens sit the way our grandparents thought teens should sit. Offer chairs and stools that are comfortable and offer a number of ways to position themselves. Let them put their feet up, mix up the colors and don't expect things to stay where you put them.

The final presenter was Angela Sigg, web developer of the Denver Public Library. She worked with teens and staff at her system to create a teen web page for the library. Her summary of what teens like in a website:

• short blocks of text
• one that reflects what they like and who they are
• mentions regular teen patrons
• features their reviews of books and movies

What they don't like:

• Boring!
• too much text
• using teen "lingo"--trying to be cool

That was the last of it. Sorry to say I did not win the raffle, and neither did Cheresse--they were giving away some cool notebooks and teen read week shirts.

Oh, speaking of teen read week, the YALSA president's meeting was just before the panel, and the president urged us all to register if we are participating in teen read week. It is free and helps them report the number of participants, which in turn helps them get funding. All around goodness.

Ergonomics and Workplace Wellness

I attended two events today addressing issues of health and wellness in the workplace—one was pretty broad and the other focused more specifically on ergonomics. These topics have come up at some of our recent staff meetings, and I know they have come up at branches and Central recently as well, so I hoped that I might learn some useful things I could bring back with me.

The ergonomics session was led by Judy Village, a professional ergonomist from the University of British Columbia. It was targeted more toward architects and planners, and I'm not planning on being involved in any major building redesigns anytime soon, so some of it went a little over my head. But there were some very useful tips that could apply to more minor redesigns of workspace and workflow, which any of us could probably use.

For example:

• Take a "systems approach" when thinking about ergonomics. While you may think you need a new chair because your back hurts, the problem might be how you're sitting in the chair, or the amount of time you spend in it, or the kinds of things you're doing, so getting a new chair may not solve your problem.
• Think about everyone who's using the workspace, including staff, patrons, IT services, cleaning staff, supervisors/administration, occasional visitors, couriers/postage delivery, etc.
• Look at ways to revise your workspace so that similar tasks are near each other and you don't have to make a lot of awkward motions to do your day-to-day job.
• Break down processes into all their component tasks so you can analyze them and question if everything you're doing is actually necessary. Village gave an example of a library shelving operation that she broke down into 24 component tasks, 15 of which were unrelated to shelving! Eliminating unnecessary steps can make the workflow process more efficient in addition to making it safer.
• Try out different ways of organizing tasks and workspaces and evaluate them alongside one another. If you're reorganizing a space that is used by multiple workers, see how different configurations work for different-sized staff.
• Don't try to find the "perfect" posture for your chair and then sit that way all day. You should be able to achieve a neutral posture (with a straight back, right angles of knees and elbows), but posture change and movement is essential.

The second session was co-presented by Lois Dye and Siobhan Champ-Blackwel. They took a broader look at workplace wellness, arguing that it has seven components that need to be in balance: physical, environmental, social, spiritual, emotional, intellectual, and occupational. Their presentation was based around information that can be found at the ALA-APA Circle of Wellness website, so I refer you there for some intriguing tips and tools.

Excellence in Library Services to Young Adults

This morning I attend YALSA's Excellence in Library Service to Young Adults. It was a great showcase of 4 different library's projects in serving unique populations of teens. There were posters from about 10 library systems all together, but only 4 presented. All were larger systems, although some of them did not have prior teen programing or services in place. Many of these projects were gateways into further serving teens, even if the programs themselves did not last.

The first library, which I missed the name of, held a 2 day teen summit where they invited teens to come and hear speakers on different hot topics. To entice teens to the summit, they emphasized big name speakers and provided a box lunch. One cool idea I came away with was to have a sign in "sheet". When their sponsor wanted to keep track of who attended with a paper sign in, the librarian came up with the idea of putting a regular flat sheet over the tables and provided sharpies for teens to "sign the sheet". This allowed tracking for numbers and names, and ended up being a piece of artwork when teens added their tags to the sheet as well.

Brazos Price from Austin Public Library was the second presenter. He spoke about their Second Chance program which formed a library branch inside both the short and long term juvenile facilities in their city. The teen spaces were very neat and clean, with a lot of tables and space, and had an impressive number of books. They started out with donated ARC's and second hand books, but have impressed their admin so much that they now have their own budget for new materials and have surpassed a couple of their branch libraries in circulation numbers.

Hennepin County Library/Brooksdale Branch started an International Teen Club at their library. The program is really inspirational in its scope. Most of the members are Hmong, but they are open to any nationality. They have developed their own programs, volunteer to help the library, designed their own logo which they use on marketing and t-shirts, made a dvd to teach new immigrants how to use the library, started a peer tutoring group and give workshops to other clubs that want to start one and have cultural workshops to help keep their culture alive here in the US.

The New Scotland Branch of the Albany Library System created a Skate Club to help bring a population of skaters into the library. The skaters had previously used the library only for internet, bathrooms and water while they spent the day skating on the expanse of concrete in front of the library. The branch librarian was smart enough to recruit a library school student who also happened to be a pro skater to come facilitate the club and they partnered with a local for profit indoor skate facility. He brought video of his own skating and encouraged the teens to do so as well. The club grew into an advisory type of group and gave feedback as to how the teen area in the new branch should look and feel, as well as helped develop their new teen employment program. The Skate Club will not be back this year since Albany is going through a lot of closures and reopenings with remodels and new libraries being built, but the group's input will live on and many of the teens that were involved with the club are now involved in other ways.

The final presentation was really short. The Alameda County Library recruited teens to teach seniors how to use computers and navigate the internet. It sounds like it was a very positive experience.

One thing I took away from this session was the power of giving teens a voice. Making them feel that the library is their place, instead of just a place they visit. One way that I saw this in many of the sessions was allowing the teens to come up with their own logo/graphic that represented who they are. At some point, I would like to facilitate an art contest with that in mind.

Bookmobiles!

Since I'm here under the aegis of Mobile Services (where I'm a CLA), and because I'm also a member of the OLOS Subcommittee on Bookmobiles, I've been trying to attend as much bookmobile/mobile library related events as possible while I'm here. Actually, the best part about coming to conferences like this is the fact that I get to meet people doing similar services from all over the country. This is really important, because being in a service that is unique within SPL means that I don't get a lot of opportunities to network and share ideas with others in similar positions.

Thankfully, there have been tons of interesting mobile library events at this year's conference. (I believe this is mainly due to the aforementioned Subcommittee on Bookmobiles, which is in its second year and is doing a bang-up job at planning conference programs.) The highlight was a well-attended morning session yesterday featuring Masha Hamilton, author of The Camel Bookmobile, a novel about a traveling library service that takes books to rural areas of Kenya by camel four days a week. Hamilton spoke about her visit to Kenya to see this service in action, and talked about the incredible excitement expressed by library patrons for whom this may be their only way of reading books.

The session's other speaker was Janice Ridgeway of the Cleveland Public Library, who gave an inspiring talk about innovation and partnering between mobile services/outreach programs and other community organizations, as well as other units of the library. Many of her suggestions were applicable more broadly to any library service—thinking creatively; being politically savvy; basing innovations and partnerships on causes and needs rather than one-time events; and getting to know your community and your library intimately—but she stressed the particular importance of this approach for outreach programs.

Ridgeway described outreach librarians as "the rebels of the profession," and talked about how bookmobiles in Cleveland have responded innovatively to community needs. For example, the home foreclosure crisis is hitting Cleveland hard: many public school buses have had to reroute to homeless shelters in order to pick up the large number of kids who have moved there. The bookmobile has followed suit, delivering books to shelters, but she pointed out the need for the library to adjust policies accordingly: residents are still required to show proof of a permanent address in order to get a library card, which is closing off access to a larger and larger segment of the population. Libraries need to be more flexible in adapting to new situations, and allow room for creative thinking, she said, adding "We need renegades!"

After this talk I attended a roundtable discussion about the huge variety of options for Mobile Services programs. The facilitator of this discussion, Everett Public Library's Theresa Gemmer, echoed Ridgeway's point about mobile library programs being some of the most innovative units of a library. Bookmobiles were the first to go to shelters in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, and have been used in many communities to provide a temporary library site when libraries are damaged in disasters or closed for renovation. "The options are only limited by what you can think of doing," she said.

With this in mind, the roundtable participants shared some of the interesting things they are trying in their programs, including distributing uncatalogued reading material and medical information to hospital waiting rooms, and providing all kinds of early literacy programming. I shared some of the exciting things SPL Mobile Services is doing, including our early literacy programs in which our children's librarian invites families from the child care centers we visit to come to their neighborhood branch libraries; our home service program; our lobby stops&emdash;where we bring carts of materials into retirement homes and senior housing; and our targeted Russian service, where we work with a Russian language librarian to deliver books to Russian immigrant communities in Seattle. It was exciting to hear about what other programs are trying, and also to share the work of our Mobile Services program.

To further this spirit of communication and collaboration, I have been working with the Subcommittee on Bookmobiles to develop and maintain a bookmobile wiki, which bookmobilers can share information about guidelines, services, vendors, and other ideas. I'm looking forward to continuing to add content to this wiki, and to encourage broader participation so it can be a truly collaborative effort.

Finally, in the afternoon there was a parade of bookmobiles, during which ten bookmobiles from around California drove around the Convention Center and parked so we could tour them. This was really interesting, and I will post pictures and video as soon as I get a chance. There was a wide variety of vehicles to match different kinds of services, from Anaheim Public Library's tractor trailer (!) to Lewis Library's (in Fontana, CA) children's bookmobile that had almost no bookshelves but consisted almost entirely of seating space for storytimes. It was great to tour the different vehicles and to talk to other bookmobile staff about what they do with them.

So my head is full now of new ideas for bookmobiles, and I'm excited to bring them back to SPL with me.

Update #1: The Bookmobile parade was featured in yesterday's Orange County Register article about the conference.

Update #2: If you click the "more photos" button on the Orange County Register article, and scroll to photo #3, you will see a photo of "man" taking pictures of the parade. That "man" is yours truly. Fame!

Sunday--Jessi

This morning I got up way too early (there are many reasons why I love working in a public library, and one if them is that I hardly ever have to get up before 8am) and went to a session called Beyond Gaming Tournaments. The materials can be found here, although I noticed that all the slides and handouts aren't there yet.

The first speaker was Craig Davis of Youth Digital Arts Cyber School. He recommended training teens to create their own digital art, music and video games. He showed us how professional sounding music can be made easily using cakewalk and nitty (sp) a music programming language. That could be combined with digital artwork and made into a video game. He suggested having a teen design a game that featured the library or website, linked to the library home page, to interest teens.

The next panelist was Elizabeth Saxton of the Cleveland Public Library. She told us about gaming advisory boards and how engaged teens could be in the decision making concerning library gaming. One idea that I found compelling was to have teens write game reviews or news type coverage of gaming tournaments to post on a blog or publish in a zine or newsletter.

The third panelist was Amy McNally from Ridgedale Library. Her presentation was mostly done by the two teens she brought along. They have an anime club and a cosplay costume making club. This part of the session had little to do with gaming, but it was interesting to listen to.

I ran into Cheresse at this session, so I accompanied her to Winning over Boy Readers, next. It was a great session and Alan Lawrence Sitomer was an inspiring speaker, however, I don't think he answered the question that the title poses. We did hear lots of good reasons why boys (and girls) should read, as well as a lot of statistics linking race, literacy and success rates for teens, as well as how to make teens comfortable with reading. He said that it is important to listen to what the teen is interested in, rather than forcing what we think of as literature on them. Also, physical and mental comfort are key. These things may sound obvious, but many people miss them in their interactions with teens. I was impressed and went back to the exhibit hall after the session to pick up his arc, The Secret Story of Sonia Rodriguez. Mr. Sitomer moonlights as a YA author.

My last session was Fostering Youth Advocacy: How Libraries can help. There were 4 speakers at this panel from Oakland County Library, two high school students in their Youth Leadership Council, the Teen Services Librarian and an administrator. Most of the talking was done by the teens, who were fairly accomplished public speakers for their ages. The program consists of a group of around 12 teens who serve themselves and the library in different ways to advocate for their rights. Some members go every year to State "Leg" day (legislature?), where they sit in on talks and have the opportunity to be heard on important issues to teens. They also lobby for better teen areas in the branches, library improvements and take part in regular monthly meetings to discuss what is important to them. Jane was also at this session, so I will be interested in her take on it.

I met David and Bo at the Book Cart Derby after all the sessions were done. I had never seen one before and was amazed by the level of the competition. Many teams had flashy, expensive looking costumes and cart decorations. All were well choreographed and one woman actually sang during their performance. The mad scientists/zombies won the gold cart. There was a lot of time, thought and creativity put into theirs.

We headed over to the iSchool Reception at the House of Blues after the derby. I met up with a cohort there and had a nice time talking to iSchool students past and present. It was a really long day...

Saturday -- Jessi

I went to the Exhibits in the morning. It wasn't too crowded, going right at 9, and I got a few good books to read and add to my uncatalogued collection. I spent more time there than I meant to and I ended up running late to Public Computing in a Library 2.0 World. It was out at the Hyatt, which was quite a trek.

Public Computing was not what I was expecting. It really focused on individual libraries in rural areas and how to get funding and what services their patrons needed. I really realized it didn't pertain to me when the speaker started talking about how patrons brought their towers in for her to fix...yes, the CPU for their personal home computers. I can't see doing that. Besides the privacy issues, what about liability?

I found Dave during the break and he introduced me to Georgia, director of the Pierce County Library System. We sat and chatted about we had seen so far, then we all ran off to our next sessions.

I attended two different sessions during the next time frame. I started off in Social Software Showcase, which was really interesting. Each of the online presenters gave a brief description of their project, then broke up into groups so that we could ask questions and see demonstrations. There website is here, and has all their presentations listed.

After they broke up into groups, I headed out to attend Teens in Your Branch Library. Unfortunately it was all information I had heard before. They had 4 speakers from very busy urban libraries that had a lot of behavior problems, and gave tips on how to manage the behavior, help staff understand teens better and how to get teens to invest in their libraries. I am sure it was very useful to others present, but I found myself wishing I had stayed in the Social Software Showcase.

First Day and YALSA 101

Today was the first real day for me. I got to the conference around noon, picked up my large (ugly!) orange bag (it looks like it could be a flotation device, or used to ward off a hunting incident) with all the conference information in it, and my badge, then went for lunch with Dave and a friend of his from KCLS. Later, after checking email and wandering the floor a bit, I stopped by the YALSA 101 presentation.

The session was presented by the YALSA officers, who told us about ways that we could get involved with YALSA, through committees and publications. We also learned about Teen Read Week, Teen Tech Week and the YALSA Literature Symposium coming up in November.

It turns out that YALSA is a big presence on the web, utilizing twitter, blog, MySpace, Facebook, Ning and a few other sites to connect with members. A new one I hadn't heard of is called Friend Feed and can be used to gather all of your social networking sites onto one page, and integrated into a Google page or Facebook. In this way, you can keep track of what all of your friends are doing from the same page, regardless of what social networking medium they use. I will have to check it out.

I also found out about an effort called Support Teen Literacy Day. I am still a little unsure how the program works, but I intend to find out more. What I gathered from the talk was that publishers donate books and they are given to teens who are in the hospital with long term illness.

After the 101 class I, and most of the other attendees went to Morton's for the YALSA happy hour. I was interviewed along with another librarian about our zine collection and the work we do with teens in relation to zines. That may end up as a pod cast on the YALSA site. Dave also met up with me there and we made some new acquaintances--Janine from the iSchool (UW) was one. She had a lot of good information about YALSA committees and book lists.

I ended the night having dinner with one of my cohort today that I didn't know would be here until she texted me earlier today to say she was coming from Portland. She is an academic librarian, so our paths probably won't cross often at the conference, but I hope we will get to hang out at least once more.