My Alt. Teen Services post is a day late. I guess that’s an improvement on last month when it was a week late. I’m going to blame it on indecisiveness this time. I spent most of yesterday trying to come up with a good topic. There’s so much to think about and talk about these days when it comes to teen services, so much in the world impacting a teenagers life and so many librarians trying to figure out the best way to help them. I was pretty much set on writing about how neat it would be to have a Teen Yoga program at a library, however, while crunching on my Grape Nuts early yesterday morning my husband thoughtfully reminded me that November 11th was Veterans Day, something which had completely passed me by. My husband has good reason to be paying close attention to this particular holiday. His nineteen year old cousin was killed a mere three days into the invasion of Baghdad in April of 2003. We were newly weds at the time, young adults ourselves and it was the first time I’d ever seen him cry. Suddenly a yoga program seemed like a very trivial topic.

It makes me twitch to think about all the issues teens have to deal with these days but the one that leaves me most anxious, the one that makes me gnaw on my hang nails and yank at my tangled hair in the morning, is the depressing situation in the Middle East. The past few years has revealed a lot of dishonesty in our government. I’m not here to argue over those issues. I’m here to try and put myself in the shoes of a sixteen year old and imagine what it must feel like to be at the edge of my childhood in a world where you seemingly can’t trust anyone, or look to anyone for honest leadership. All the facts and the falseness, all the broken promises, I wonder, how do they make sense of it all? How does it effect them? Do they even care?

Of course they do. They may not keep up with the news in the traditional way but they do keep up and they do care.
I’m currently reading The End of America: Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot by Naomi Wolf. Now before you say “Whoa, maybe not such an objective middle-way read”, know that I’m only on page twenty and don’t have much of an opinion on the book other than that it’s helping me learn a lot of WWII history that I didn’t know. There is, however, a quote I read which has been stubbornly sitting at the tip of my brain all weekend. In an attempt to express how fragile our civil liberties are Wolf uses an interesting pendulum analogy:

“Up until now, the basic checks and balances established by the Founders have functioned so well that the pendulum has always managed to swing back. It’s very success has made us lazy. We trust it too much, without looking at what a pendulum requires in order to function; the stable framework that allows movement; space in which to move; that is liberty.”

I read the part about being “lazy” and was reminded of another quote that I read recently in Julian Aiken’s article from American Libraries, Outdated and Irrelevent? Rethinking the Library Bill of Rights. The results of the survey he reviewed indicated that “more than half of our public libraries are not conforming to Article V of the Library Bill of Rights“. Apparently this particular part of our job has simply turned into a cumbersome battle that most librarians are “no longer interested in fighting.” I find something downright scary about “rethinking” the Library Bill of Rights and remolding it to better fit the needs of busy librarians who are unwilling to spend the time explaining Article V to busy working parents.

So, where am I going with this? I’m not entirely sure, this is definitely a very randomly thought out post. Am I saying that we’ve become lazy? I don’t know. I’m not sure you can quantify laziness so lets not even use that word. Maybe we’ve become too cautious. Tensions are high in this country, people are on fire with opinion, who can blame anyone for choosing to remain reticent in the wake of controversy or for choosing precaution over advocacy if it means keeping relations in a community peaceful, not to mention helping to avoid heated disagreements with friends and peers. That route is easier, less stress on everyone, that’s for sure. But I have to admit, the repercussions of that kind of cautious action scares the bejezus out of me. Is it enough that we keep gay/lesbian fiction on our library shelves, yet overlook doing programs or displays to promote those books because we’re afraid of upsetting people? How many of us shy away from doing teen programs that may involve political or religious topics because we worry it might lead to inflammatory discussion or upset parents? I think Teen Librarians need to be careful about choosing the quiet stay out of trouble lets lay low and walk the path of least resistance so we can appeal to everyone route. You may think your appealing to everyone that way but instead you end up isolating your services to a quiet reading room and I say quiet because, well, eventually no one will be there. They’ll be here instead.

I think Younker had it right when he described teen services as “the illegitimate child of public libraries”. It’s unfortunate but true and because of it teen librarians have to expect controversy while on job. They have to anticipate these moments be willing to face them and engaged in them productively. Most importantly, we shouldn’t be afraid to let teens engage in disagreement. When holding a book discussion, don’t gloss over hot topics because you’re worried it may pinch a nerve and start an argument. If you do, you may be missing out on a perfect opportunity for teens to express themselves. Teens love to express their opinion. Let them. While you’re at it let them know what it means to be able to live somewhere where they are able to express their opinion without persecution. Then let them know how fragile those rights are and how easily they can be stripped away from them. Using library services to empower our youth is one way we can help maintain the checks and balances in our society.