I recently returned from my first PLA conference. It was a wonderful, inspiring experience. There were a number of conference sessions focusing on teen services, a good sign, I think, that YALSA has definitely experienced a growth in recent years.

I thought I would just summarize some of the key points from the sessions I went to that pertained specifically to alternate teen services. Perhaps the “biggest” concept that speakers touched on most was the idea of collaboration. Many public libraries are discovering the ways in which partnership can lead to successful teen services. Collaboration comes in many different forms, the first one being with teens themselves. One slogan often repeated was “by teens, for teens and with teens”. Other libraries have found success partnering with their public schools such as the Howard County Library. An entire session was devoted to this program (toolkit can be found at www.hclibrary.org/partners.) It was nice to see how both entities worked so hard to make libraries an integral part of the school curriculum.

Imaginon is another example of a successful collaboration between a public library and local children’s theatre. I’ve always thought one of the best ways for connecting with teens is to follow the mall library tradition that began a few years ago (see King Country Library System) and start building mini branches specifically for teens in places like the YMCA and other youth canteen-like places. These wouldn’t have to be full service libraries, but just enough to peak interests and show teens what’s available for them.

Assessing the success of current teen programs was another area touched on. Patrick Jones was very insistent about never doing a program without a survey at the end. This is, indeed, one of the best ways to know what parts of the program were successful and what parts were not. Attendance doesn’t always provide an accurate assessment. In fact, Jones remarked that many programs with high attendance are sometimes less successful since it often results in less of a “connection” with teenagers. Setting an attendance limit should be seen as not only necessary but developmentally appropriate. Aaron Schmidt from walkingpaper.org had a very interesting alternative to the traditional paper survey. During one of his programs, he set up a questionnaire on his laptop and left it in the back room. That way, teens could leave comments at their leisure rather than doing it in a rush at the end of the program.

Many speakers also voiced the necessity to work towards altering negative attitudes towards teenagers. Mary K. Chelton (who referred to herself as the “oldest living young adult librarian”), talked a lot about the “ideal user syndrome”, that is the idea that teenagers should exhibit a certain kind behavior other than the one they are currently exhibiting. For example, “they should be reading books, not playing games”. Patrick Jones, Tricia Suellentrop and Michele Gorman all referenced recent studies in their talk about the teenage brain and how it literally functions and processes thoughts differently from adults, just another reason why providing services that promote positive youth development is so important.