Contributed by Matthew
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Working with Teens: Starting from the beginning (a few general pointers)

Teenagers often have a bad reputation in libraries – they either never come in or when they do they sometimes cause problems and as such become unpopular with library staff. This places them in a difficult position as they are no longer children and they are not yet adults. Because of this they are in a bit of a blind spot as there are no specific services offered to them. Junior Libraries usually have children’s librarians in to organise events and make the borrowers feel welcome and teach them how to use the library. Unfortunately when children become teens they are left to struggle through the library on their own until they become ‘adults’ in which case the general librarians step in to provide services.

By the time children have become adults they have usually wandered away because libraries are not cool, they do not offer them any services and they don’t feel welcoming.

These days the only reason many teens come into the Library is to use the Internet or they come in with their families in which case they hang around the adult or junior libraries looking bored and unhappy.

Offering a Teen Service

The knee-jerk reaction would be to start a teen service offering them all the extras currently extended to adults and children. This would include reading groups, dedicated teen shelving, special events and author visits aimed specifically at them as well as staff that are willing to deal with them on a regular basis.

While this is a good idea, doing it all in one fell swoop would be dooming it, if not to failure then to limited success. The reasons would be that after such an extended period of neglect, Teens would be unwilling to return en masse to partake of what is now offered to them. This could severely dent the enthusiasm of the people/person organising it

I have found that starting small is the best way to build up a group – maybe enticing three or four teens in at first and going on from there. Bribery and corruption is a good way to start – attract them in with chocolate and coke (or fruit and juice for the health conscious) although you must make sure that you have something interesting to maintain their interest and commitment to keep them coming back. This way you can develop a core of regulars who will spread news of the events to their friends, making them aware of teen authors and other services currently offered by the library.

Unfortunately a large number of the older teens are harder to reach, as they have been out of libraries for longer. But there are still those that use the library for study, Internet use and reading purposes.

To properly run a Teen group you need to first gain their trust (which is not an easy thing to do). This has to be achieved gradually – by being visible in the branch so you become a known quantity, helping with general queries – homework help, finding various books (usual Library work) and most importantly talking to them - not at them; and listening when they speak. Teenagers are very quick to pick up on patronising behaviour and it is next to impossible to make a positive second impression.

Too often when an initial reading event aimed at teens is organised in a Library, an outsider is used to hold the event and this can lead to what I call ‘the Lone Ranger effect.’ The lone ranger effect is when someone rushes to set everything up, holds the event, and then disappears — leaving everyone who attended wondering who the masked man was.

Adult Reading Groups are normally centred around reading one particular book at a time. With teens, however, I have found this to be nearly impossible (depending on the size of the group). Rather choosing a particular subject and organising a range of books, magazines and comics gives a wider choice of reading material and does not exclude those who are not as good at reading as the others.

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Post Contributed by Matthew

Matthew runs the teen librarian UK web site and is working to build support for teen library services in the UK. In this first post, he offers pointers for starting up a teen library service. m