We are going collective!

In December, there will be a virtual meeting for those that want to get involved with shaping the Alternative Teen Services project.  We are looking for people that want to be involved with shaping the blog, or want to support it so that this project does not die. All that is needed is some ideas and a desire to keep the blog going, and a willingness to help out in some capacity, whether it be with feedback at a virtual meeting or taking over an aspect of the blog project. If you want to be a part of the project, then please respond to this blog post with your e-mail or contact teenservices@yalibrarian.com. Details about the meeting time/date will be arranged after we know who we are working with and can arrange a convenient time for all involved.

Some technical changes

• WordPress, 2.6.3 is now installed on the blog. As a reader, you will not see much of a difference, but the bloggers will notice the improved functionality when they create new posts.
• intense debate is our new comment system on the Alternative Teen Services blog. Readers are able to use an avatar with comments, rate user comments, and respond directly to other comments.
  Intense Debate also supports Open ID,  which means you do not need to create a brand new account if you already have an account with blogger, livejournal, flickr, or yahoo. Go ahead, try out the new features by commenting on this post!

Halloween in your libraries!

Below are some photos of Halloween-esque fun for teens in libraries.

Nightfall Dinner Party @ Alice Baker Library

Gock Puppets @ La Mesa Public Library

Halloween Cosplay Winners @ Topeka and Shawnee County Public Library

Call for teen program idea submissions

Have a great teen programming idea that’s inexpensive? (Like, less than $100.) You could have it published in Cool Teen Programs on a Shoestring, edited by Jenine Lillian and to be published next year by Neal-Schuman. You can find the questionnaire for the form online at www.tinyurl.com/yalsashoestring and send it to coolteenprograms@gmail.com by Nov. 20. Those whose programs are chosen for publication will be notified by Jan. 16.

Link Bytes

• You probably knew that games help steer interest in reading, right?
• Jami shares free anime viewing resources on the YALSA Blog.  Free anime on Hulu - TELL YOUR TEENS!
• Are you familar with animoto? It’s a free online video creation tool! see this animoto presentation regarding teen library spaces.
• Mark teen spaces with teen scents.

Video
Read Flip Win Contest Wrap-up from Orland Park Library

Book Trailer for Drums, Girls and Dangerous Pie

In Photos

Gossip Girls Book Display

Play Animanga Musical Chairs at the next get together
@ Dayton Metro Public Library

Japanese Fashion talk at anime club
@ Abilene Public Library

Teen Yoga @ yer library
– SDCL teens

Some quick news regarding the Alternative Teen Services Blog and web site:
YA Lit Content Moving to Main Blog
We are in the process of phasing out the Brave & Brass Book Blog, which was a separate blog with content about teen literature. Those of you that read the Brave & Brass Book Blog are familiar with the subject matter that covers book reviews, book talks, literature perspectives, and collection development.
We found that most of the readers of our Main Blog wanted lit-themed topics, and therefore, we decided to move content from the Brave & Brass Blog to our main blog. So please note that the blog is still going to be around, but in a different format. Lit-themed content will come through our main blog instead of being separated.

Readers subscribed to the Brave & Brass Book Blog feed will continue to get content from us when it is book-related. It is hoped that the phase-out process will be finished by June 2nd. For the few of you that didn’t want to see this change, so sorry! I hope that the scroll function works well for you, so that you can get directly to the content you want to read.

Personalize your Comments with Avatars
Would you like a customized avatar to appear next to the lovely comments that you create on our blog? We recently installed a plug-in in cooperation with Gravatar that does just that! By signing-up at the gravatar web site, you can upload an avatar that will be used whenever you make comments on our Blog. The avatar is associated with the e-mail address used when leaving comments. To sign up for your avatar, go to http://www.gravatar.com. Then be sure to come back to our blog and leave a test comment so you can check out the new flair!

Teen Crafts on Flickr

Click to enlarge!

Happy Summer everyone, and congrats on getting through all those book talks and school visits.

The Card Catalog of Creativity Blog has a nice overview of a Teen Advisory Group Meeting in which teens painted book ends for the library. The activity allowed teens to personalize the teen collection.

Thinking about a renovation? The Indie librarian shares research on the types of furniture teens do and don’t like in their libraries. While some furniture may be cute in the children’s area if placed in the teen area the furniture would be out-of-place.

If you need to attract teens to the library, then why not build a state-of-the-arch gaming facility equipped with xbox 360s and gaming PCs? Carver’s Bay branch library in South Carolina did just that and gained more than 60 members for the teen gaming club within the first week of opening.

Tech Related

If you have logged onto Facebook recently, chances are you read the news about profiles appearing in Google search results. This may be a good time to remind teens about controlling privacy settings on public profiles.

Lit Related

The latest episode of JetSet highlights diy ‘zines. I thank twitter for the introduction to Jetset, which is a quick mashup of the weekly news in a digestible video format. The last episode included more than one story related directly to teens and the pop culture that influences them so much.

A new blog featuring urban lit reviews is looking for – reviews! For more information, visit streetfiction.org.

Teen Read Week is just about four weeks away! There is still time to register on the YALSA web site. Visit ala.org/teenread before September 17th to register.

There is a lot going on in both the library world and blogosphere and sometimes it can be too much to keep up! I’ll be doing a monthly update of news, and I hope this update will help you breathe a little by giving you just enough news to get caught-up.

Teen Read Week is less that two months away, meaning that all us TeenLIBS should have a game plan in mind for supporting this national literacy initiative. There are tons of program ideas on the YALSA wiki, and many can be used for last-minute program planning.

Although the ALA Annual 2007 conference is old news, it’s worth mentioning some of the librarians that have provided blog coverage from a teen librarian perspective. Lindsey and Trisha provide an excellent overview of the conference on their blogs about special events, programs, adventures in the stacks, and personal experiences. There is also some good mentions on the YALSA blog regarding the conference, including the Zine-A-Palooza program, the Music and Media Interest Group Meeting, and the to I-Pods and Beyond Presentation.

The Gaming, Learning, and Libraries Symposium was held July 22-24 in Chicago. Beth Gallaway has provided coverage for the symposiom on the Game ON: Gaming in Libraries blog. Included in the coverage is Eli Neiburger’s guide to choosing videogames for tournament play and information about sharing your library’s videogame scores by joining a national library videogame ledger (to begin in January 2008).

Liz and Sophie over at Pop Goes the Library Blog need your help! They are writing a book and need input about using pop culture to connect with the community. If interested in helping, you can take the survey here. The book will be called Pop Goes the Library: Using Pop Culture to Connect with your Whole Community.

Lindsey Dunn recently hosted a teen Mystery theater program that received a positive response from the participating teens. The mystery kit used to conduct the program can be purchased online for around $30.00. Read more about the program and see photos on her blog, Zee Says=Film Addict + Teen Librarian.

Worthington Public Library hosted a fashion program for teens called Project Goodwill. Teens were instructed to put together a last-minute runway outfit using donated clothing from library staff. They were allowed to bring one accessory from home to complete the outfit. Visit the Worthing Public Library teen blog for more information.

Joyce Valenza shares a list of photo and image web tools on the SLJ Blog. Of special note is the graffiti text generator and the powerful online graphics editing program, Picnik. Share these web tools with your teens or use them to updgrade your Teen Library Myspace.

And now onto news from the local front, regarding our AWESOME web site! Carleen from Library Shrine will be coming back on board as an active blogger. You can look forward to her well-thought out posts in the immediate future.

The TeenLibWiki underwent a makeover so that it can operate more as an organic encyclopedia rather than a list of links to web sites. Extensive documentation has been included on how to participate, so please read up and help us build a totally awesome and free online resource for teen librarians.

And finally, I have recently received several e-mails from people wanting to contribute to the Alt. Teen Services blog. We definitely want the help, so thanks for offering it. I plan to catch-up on these e-mails sometime in mid-August, and I thank you for being so patient!