This past year I have been taking part in a variety of fantasy sports leagues for the first time. I started with a fantasy baseball league last spring and now I am hooked. I learned that in addition to being very fun fantasy leagues are often free. So why not create some sort of library program around a fantasy league for the teens in the library.

This would be a very easy thing to do. You can find these leagues through a variety of sources such as Yahoo, ESPN, CBS, as well as a host of other places, and as I mentioned above, many of them are free. The librarian would have to establish the league and act as commissioner, which means they control the league settings and rules. Then it is simply a matter of getting an email address for any teen that wants to play and inviting them to join the league. This is all that is necessary to have a fun ongoing program throughout the season of whatever sport you are using.

There is however a lot more that could be added to make this even more fun. The commissioner can choose any type of draft they want for the league. This could simply be an automated random draft. However it can also be a live draft. Live drafts can take two forms. One has nothing to do with computers, the players would all simply meet together and choose their fantasy players and then the commissioner can send in the information. Perhaps the best way, however, is an online draft. All the players simply need to log on to the fantasy league at the same time and they can participate in the draft. The computer will automatically pick the best available players for anyone who can’t find the time to get to a computer during the draft. So why not host a live draft using the computers at your library. Invite everybody in the league to come in and draft their players live. You could offer food, and even have sports magazines and books available for people to use for research.

One other thought would be to have a local professional athlete come in for the event. I live in Michigan, so I think it would be great to have one of the younger players on the Tigers come in to talk about what it is like to become a major league baseball player, or their experience playing in the World Series. This athlete visit could be great before or after the draft. It would be even more fun if you could somehow convince the athlete to take part in the fantasy league, although I would admit this idea might be a little far fetched.

These are just a few of many great ideas that could surround a fun fantasy sports league for your library. It could be a great opportunity to draw in some high school athletes who, do to time constraints, are often hard to get into the library. If anybody out there has used a fantasy league for programming please leave me a comment as I would love to hear about it. I hope to try this in the spring for the next baseball season and more ideas would be very helpful.

Here is a long overdue post about the Fayetteville Public Library’s Alternative Teen Fashion show, put on for teen read week 2006. This post is also titled, “possibly the coolest teen read week program we’ve mentioned so far on the Alt. Teen Services Blog”. And yes the program involved reading! the teens read books to make their outfits! — Stephanie

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Teen Alternative Fashion Show:
the ultimate fashion event for teens by teens

By Jenine Lillian and the Teen Alternative Fashion Show Planning Team

For Teen Read Week 2006
Fayetteville Public Library, Fayetteville, Arkansas

It all started with a book…

In April of this year, a Young Adult Librarian (um, that’d be AMANDA! of YaLibrarian.com) posted an entry on her nationally recognized blog about some cool, new fashion books for teens. I ordered the books for our YA Collection and while visiting schools in Fayetteville, featured the book Generation T and a spark flew among the teens. This book proved to be inspiring to young artists in Fayetteville and in August, we formed a Teen Alternative Fashion Show Planning Team, setting our sights on National Teen Read Week in October. After many months of hard work, generous donations of time and supplies, and unfettered creativity and dedication of the Planning Team, we created an artistic experience.

I had about 200 attend this once-in-a-lifetime performance art event. Members of my Teen Anime Club dressed in Cosplay and teens from a 30 mile radius planned and implemented this event—we met every two weeks since August, with weekly meetings the last two weeks before the show and a dress rehearsal two nights before the main event. The teens designed and created their own outfits using altered tee shirts, vintage clothing, knitting, plastics, costuming, packing materials, marking tape, office supplies, duct tape, paint, ties, bubble wrap, and fabrics. [I MC’d the event and wore an alt. fashion piece that I’d made (a “skirt”) out of slides and paper clips. It was a cool day to be a librarian.]

I worked with the University of Arkansas’ Apparel Studies Program/Fashion Merchandising Club to stage the show and tutor us on how to walk on the catwalk. And, the UofA’s radio station DJ (whom I work with a lot with my Teen Anime Club) to have specific outfit element-themed tunes for the event. I arranged for the local beauty college to send students to do hair for models, booked three teen photographers, and paid a friend to record the show. I also partnered with a popular local resale shop to raffle gift certificates and library volunteers served food and drinks at the short break. All told, the event took about 70 people to pull off. It was an incredibly powerful event for the teens of this community—we made something unique and beautiful and teen-powered, unlike anything that has ever been done before.

Below is a list of the books we used to get ideas and patterns. Perhaps you’ll be inspired to create your own alternative fashion…

Alternative Fashion Book List

• Generation T: 108 Ways to Transform a T-Shirt by Megan Nicolay. YA 646.404 Nic
• The Hip Handbag Book: 25 Easy-to-make Totes, Purses, and Bags by Sherri Haab. YA 646.48 Haa
• Rip It! How to Deconstruct and Reconstruct the Clothes of Your Dreams by Elissa Meyrich. YA 646.404 Mey
• Second-Time Cool: The Art of Chopping Up a Sweater by Linden, Brieditis, and Evans. YA 6465.408 Lin
• Sew Subversive: Down and Dirty DIY for the Fabulous Fashionista by Melissa Alvorado. 646.404 Alv
• Tease: 50 Inspired T-Shirt Transformations by Superstars of Art, Craft, & Design by Sarah Sockit. YA 746 Tea

Additional Information

• Read the Press Release for the program
• View a slideshow from Arkansas Online

I received e-mail from Andrew about using the LAST FM social networking tool. He was unable to comment in a previous blog, so I’ve posted his thoughts as a blog entry. By the way, our word verification comment tool is case sensitive. We’ve had occasional problems, but I prefer to use word verification rather than having to approve every comment before it goes live. If for some odd reason you are unable to leave a comment, just e-mail me and I’ll make sure your thoughts are shared on the blog in some capacity (either comment or new blog entry).

-Stephanie ( contact alt.teen.services at yalibrarian.com )
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Hello I tried to leave a comment on the post but it kept saying that i
entered the wrong security code.  I dont know what I was doing wrong
so i figured i’d email it to you.

I have recently found a networking site which I think is really
interesting and I saw that it wasn’t mentioned in the YALSA pdf.  It
is www.Last.fm and it takes all of your recently listened mp3s(from
either your mp3 player or from the player on your computer and tracks
how many times you have played them.  It then will give you potential
“friends” who share similar musical interests.

I have been playing with this site for about a week and I am working
on a program with my teen patrons with this website as a warm up
program to a teen podcast.  I was thinking I could use this to see
what the kids are listening too and see if there is an interest in
making our own podcast.

I would be interested if anyone else has played with this site and/or
done it with teen patrons.

Andrew

p.s. heres the link to my personal last.fm profile to get an idea of
the tracking and what not… http://www.last.fm/user/scumkatt/

Thanks