Usually it’s the teens in our library who help me keep up with all the new or “it” websites but this time, it was actually my husband who found this little gem.

Musicovery is an interactive radio website that allows you to choose music according to your mood. You can then narrow your search by music decade or music type. Your search results show up as a kind of funky selection web, then you can choose what song you want to listen to from there. It doesn’t stop there. Like LastFM, it also provides additional suggestions according to the artist being played. Phew. It’s almost exhausting trying to make you’re way through all the choices but really great for those days when you just don’t know what to listen to, not to mention a wonderful snazzy website to show teens as a way to introduce them to new music.

Crystal Niedzwiadek interviewed me about the Alternative Teen Services Blog for a YALSA Podcast. We talked about the technical process of running a blog, spam, censorship, and connecting with the community of teen librarians. You can listen to the podcast here:

Or download it here: http://pod-serve.com/audiofile/filename/7611/ttw_bloggers.mp3

The second half of the podcast is with Eli Neiburger and focuses on the AADL Gaming Blog, which is used to establish an online community between the teens and kids that attend gaming tournaments at Ann Arbor District Library. There is some pretty fascinating discussion going on about gaming in libraries. For more information on Gaming, teens, and libraries, I recommend listening to a gaming presentation Eli did at the 2007 gaming in libraries symposium.
http://gaming.techsource.ala.org/index.php/…

While librarianship is an apolitical profession for many, I endeavor to practice advocacy and activism in the library and dispense with the fallacy of neutrality. In my first year as a librarian, I have not been successful in implementing the tenets of what may be called radical librarianship and I am still trying to figure out what it means to cultivate social justice in and through the library. The best way for me to do this may be to incorporate activism into youth programming. My first project is an Amnesty International chapter at the library.

My friends and I belonged to our high school AI chapter and Wednesdays after school consisted of a clutch of punks eating pizza and writing a letter or two but spending most of our time messing around. It was a good time and I talked to people I wouldn’t have talked to otherwise. I do not know yet how successful AI will be at the library. Young people are particularly interested in their freedoms and rights, which may easily extend to a concern for the freedoms and rights denied to political prisoners from China, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Burma, and throughout the world. Perhaps AI will provide a context for understanding about the Other, for fostering compassion, for fighting injustice. Maybe it will just be a fun gathering of letterwriting and pizza. That would be enough.

In a great interview in the November 2004 issue of Arthur Magazine musician and activist Kathleen Hanna said, “I think it’s completely political for people to feel joy in a joyless culture. That in itself really is doing a great service to the planet.”

This is a guiding principle for me. I think in our programing and outreach efforts, joy is a most worthy aim.

If anyone else wants to start an AI chapter at their library or school, there is some information here.

In my place of work, there is a centralized fund used to purchase teen materials for the branch libraries and those purchases are usually based on starred reviews in journals. Unfortunately, these starred books tend to be the types of materials that teens in my community are not interested in. Instead, they hunger for urban books, high-interest non-fiction, and manga. There are also requests for the best sellers that don’t necessarily get starred book reviews, such as James Patterson’s Maximum Ride series. And I also have some classic readers that are gearing up for college.

Thankfully, I have an infill budget that can be used to build the collection beyond starred booklists. Herein lies the challenge. With a modest amount of infill money, where should you start? Should the money go towards building a core collection? This can be especially pertinent if the collection is lacking core materials and balanced genres. Should it be spent on high-interest materials that will fly of the shelves? The missing college-bound classics that a handful of teens are requesting? Best sellers that aren’t stocked by the publication date because they weren’t starred in a review journal? Selection lists from the Young Adult Library Services Association? As a children’s/teen librarian with a modest budget, I must make the best of the allocated funds to provide teens with a balanced collection.

Here’s what I did to meet this challenge:

The first year I worked here, I purchased core materials for the collection. Authors such as Sharon Flake, Sharon Draper, Walter Dean Myers, and Jaqueline Woodson were missing, possibly because they were initially available but never returned. To get ideas for what makes a core collection in an urban library,I browsed book blogs on the internet, recommended reading lists on Amazon.com, and articles published by YALS and VOYA. I spent the remaining money on high-interest materials and manga. Teens in the library eagerly provided me with a list of manga series to order. And YALSA’s Quick Picks for Reluctant Readers is an excellent resource when buying high-interest materials for teens.

During year two, I have focused on acquiring urban books, which includes the Bluford High Series and the Kimani Tru Series. I’ve also run into a dilemma with the manga collection, in which most of the material acquired from year one is permanently missing. In other words, about 40% of the manga has been stolen. At this point I had to decide between purchasing new manga series that our animanga club has suggested, and reordering missing titles. I chose to acquire the new series and year three collection money may focus on missing titles.

At the end of the budget year, I plan to use YALSA’s Popular Paperbacks for Young Adults and Quick Picks for Reluctant Readers to get up to date with new high-interest materials. I usually poke around in the other YALSA selection lists too, including Great Graphic Novels for teens.

I think the key to building any collection is to have a game plan and teens should be involved in the process of developing the plan. I based the way I built the collection on the interests of teens in the community. I did surveys that asked about their favorites subjects and I also take notes from reader’s advisory interactions. That’s how I found out that urban books, high interest fic and non-fic, and manga are the materials most likely to be checked out.

With a modest budget, you can’t have the perfect teen collection. You can only build towards it. So you have to make decisions about what aspect must be focused on. I chose high-interest materials because I want the books to be read. But I balanced out that focus by purchasing core authors that teens from the inner-city would be required to read for book reports or just because their friends told them about it!

Resources

Core Collection
YALSA’s Outstanding Books for the College Bound

Urban books for Teens
Crazy Quilts Blog - 2007 list for teens of color
Crazy Quilts Blog - 2006 lists

Selection Lists
YALSA Selection List

Manga
TokyoPop
DelRay

Addendum: Readers, if you have any good resources you use for collection development, please share!