Last December I blogged about the negative associations that teens have of libraries, as reported by OCLC’s Perceptions of Libraries and Information Resources Report.

One of the most important things to point out in this report is the reference to the attitudes of librarians. Although only two negative associations about librarian attitudes are listed, I think the attitude of librarians towards teens is a problem that is prevalent in public libraries. My experience in public libraries has informed me that the majority of staff generally do not like working with teenagers. I believe that young adult library staff need to convince other staff members that young adults are worthy of exceptional customer service. Teen library staff should try to eradicate negative stereotypes about teenagers that might be causing this disconnect.

Alane Wilson of OCLC posted a response that further argues that the attitudes of librarians are in many cases what keeps teens away from the library:

In the report we were only able to print about 10% of the total verbatim comments. But I have all of them and was struck by the volume of comments from younger respondents–they clearly welcomed an opportunity to tell us what they thought about libraries and library staff. But, I was also struck by the overall negative tone and dismayed by the bad treatment by library staff so many teenagers reported, regardless of the country. Definitely a problem and one I hope readers of the report tackle in their own libraries with more ways for teens to “talk back”, more YA staff and perhaps more involvement with teen advisory groups.

I think Alane’s comments point out the need for teen services advocates to educate library staff on the value of serving teens. How are we going to build exceptional teen library services, when working in an organization where the majority of library staff members do not personally like young adults, let alone support teen services? I like how Alane suggests the forum of a teen advisory group as a way for teens to “talk back” about their frustrations of their negative experiences with librarians. I think the end goal, however, is to have as many library employees as possible understand the need to serve teens, and to embrace the teenage group as a patron population that is in the library because they want to be, not necessarily because they want to cause trouble!

Perhaps one way to get library staff to appreciate teen services, is to emphasize the idea that teens are the library’s future adult patrons. Based on this theory, librarians should do what they can to make the teen population feel welcome and to meet their needs, so as to ensure a future patron base.

I think we should brainstorm other ways to promote teen library services within our own library work environments. Do you have any ideas? Please add them as comments to this blog post. If I get enough responses, I’ll post a summary of the ideas.