How does one celebrate the life, or rather death, of the undead? With the popularity of series such as Twilight, Vampire Kisses and Blue Bloods, throwing a vampire party is a great way to get teens excited about reading. But where to begin? In my mind, every successful party includes cake. And what better variety of cake to serve at a party devoted to blood suckers than red velvet? Even if you don’t have the budget to purchase a bakery cake, you can find red velvet cake mixes and mix it up yourself. If you are ambitious, there is a recipe in the February 2008 issue of Shojo Beat for a Vampire Knight Valentine’s cake that looks like it would be yummy anytime of year. Another option would be making cupcakes and then allowing each teen to decorate as they see fit with darkly colored sprinkles or icing. If you have access to Halloween cookie cutters, you could also decorate cookies in the shapes of coffins, tombstones, bats, or spider webs.

Music can also contribute to the success of a party. Stephenie Meyer has already done a lot of the work for us when it comes to selecting music for a vampire themed party. Begin with the playlists that can be found on her site and expand from there with additional music from those bands. The website allmusic.com can help you find other artists. Simply search for an artist and it will give you their influences, followers, and similar acts. Songs such as “Vampires Will Never Hurt You” and “Early Sunsets Over Monroeville” by My Chemical Romance and “Bloodletting (The Vampire Song)” by Concrete Blonde add an appropriately ghoulish atmosphere. Try having teens come up with their own vampy mix to share.

A few simple activities can tie the whole thing together. You could either make a quiz on general vampire lore or create separate quizzes for individual books, using each book as a prize. The most fun thing for the teens who are into vampires, is to make them a vampire for a day. Your local community theatre might have a volunteer who would be willing to come in and transform them into vampires. We had a staff member give people vampire bites on the neck using eye shadow and liner in shades of red, brown, blue and purple for appropriate bruising around the wound.

In my community, the majority of teens who love vampire stories tend to feel like they are alone in their interests. They are teens on the fringe, sometimes into the Goth and Emo scenes. Celebrating one of their passions can show them that they are not as alone as they think, and give them the chance to be outsiders together.

Opening Photo: be careful / Originally uploaded by girl interrupted. jess

Posted by Sarah Granville

New post from Jeff 2.0! Jeff took a 15 year detour through chemistry and engineering before becoming a librarian. He wonders why he didn’t start there in the first place. In addition to being a YA specialist, Jeff is also a Boy Scout leader.

Intellectual Property Rights, Creative Commons and…Nine Inch Nails?

Teaching information literacy skills is an important role for YA librarians. Educating teens about such issues as intellectual property rights, digital rights management (DRM) and the law can often come across as preachy. Fortunately, an unlikely partner can help break the ice with teens on this subject: Nine Inch Nails.

Ask a teen where they got the music on their MP3 player and they’ll likely reply “the internet.” Of course, the real question is: was it obtained legally? While authorized downloads of artists’ music are available through online retailers such as Apple’s iTunes Store or Rhapsody, many people still use file-sharing protocols such as Limewire, KaZaa and BitTorrents for unauthorized downloading (aka theft) of copyrighted materials.

The world seems divided into two camps: those who view all intellectual property as essentially being public domain (as long as they don’t get caught), and those who view all intellectual property as private property posted “no trespassing, authorized persons only”. The former camp says that copyright stifles creative uses of intellectual property such as sampling in music; the latter camp says that owners of intellectual property should have the right to control all its uses.

As in most ideological battles, there is a middle ground. Enter Creative Commons, a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt charitable corporationthat defines the spectrum of possibilities between full copyright — all rights reserved — and the public domain — no rights reserved. Our licenses help you keep your copyright while inviting certain uses of your work — a “some rights reserved” copyright [http://creativecommons.org/about/]

Many teens may be familiar with Creative Commons from its use on Flickr. Flickr allows you to apply Creative Commons licensing to grant other users the right to use your work under certain circumstances.

Trent Reznor and Nine Inch Nails have given us the opportunity to use their music to educate teens on intellectual property issues. NIN has released their latest album, Ghosts I-IV under a Creative Commons BY-NC-SA license. This means that you can share it, or remix it and share it under the same license for noncommercial (i.e. free) uses as long as you attribute it to Nine Inch Nails. Nine Inch Nails offers the album for download for only $5, or you can download a partial album for free from the website or via BitTorrent.

The album consists of instrumental tracks which are perfect for remixing and/or adding vocals. One of the programs suggested for Teen Tech Week 2008 (or any other time) involves teens using Splice Music, JamGlue, or Audacity to create their own music. Why not include downloading the free Nine Inch Nails tracks and have the teens make their own remix? How about adding vocals? What about a music video posted to YouTube? The finished product could be uploaded and shared following the Creative Commons BY-NC-SA license. The teens will have fun exercising their creativity, and we will get the opportunity to talk with teens about intellectual property rights and Creative Commons licensing.
Posted by Jeff 2.0

The word has been out for awhile now that social neworking sites provide a creative and easy way to connect with people. Libraries, businesses, publishers, musicians, politicians, radio stations, you name it, the question is not so much “do you have a MySpace?” but “who does not have a MySpace?”.

One of the first things librarians often do when they create their MySpace (or Facebook) profile is search out well known YA authors and add them as friends. The purpose is mainly to help introduce book titles to visiting teens and to promote books and the joy of reading in general. Besides, who wouldn’t want Meg Cabot on their friend list. How cool is that?

Publishers have caught on and many have started automatically creating MySpace and Facebook profiles for their authors as soon as their books come out. However, after reading an article in the October issue of Publishers Weekly, it would appear that some publishers are becoming weary of this practice for two reasons. First of all, maintaining author profiles can be time consuming. Second, a publishers ultimate goal is to sell books and it’s difficult to find verifiable statistics proving that social networking sites actually do increase book sells. “We have tangible results that blog postings and website features sell books. The jury is still out on the effectiveness of social networks” says Fauzia Burke, President of FSB Associates. Granted, the people interviewed for this particular article mainly publish for an adult audience, so it would be interesting to see what HarperCollins would say about the effectiveness of author profiles when it comes to selling their books.

Nevertheless, this article intrigued me since a librarys’ motivation for creating social networking profiles are in a sense similar to that of a publisher. We’re trying to connect, to direct viewers to our physical and virtual locations. So if publishers are having a hard time getting tangible results from them then how are librarians doing? Is it possible to be able to prove that a MySpace is getting viewed and more importantly, directing viewers to our resources? I believe it is, at least with MySpace. (Keep in mind that I am only 75% techie so if someone out there knows a better way please share). I noticed recently that the “new skin” on MySpace has a new site tracker so you can see how often your profile is being viewed. If you want to know whether your profile is leading viewers to your website or blog then you can use free applications like Blog Tracker and Google Analytics which show you how viewers interact with your site and how they got there in the first place (keywords, referring sites, etc.).

There does, however, seem to be an interesting movement away from traditional social networking sites. Anna Zelenka of Wordpress wrote a post mentioning how some well known bloggers have always seen the whole MySpace/Facebook thing to be pretty much a waste of time and found blogging to be much more effective in reaching readers (the focus of the discussion on these posts has more to do with the OpenID movement, a concept I’m still trying to wrap my pretty blond head around). She also points to a fascinating post by Dana Boyd who uses the term ephemeral profile to describe a particular behavior that I’ve also witnessed with the teens at my library. They have this tricky habit of loosing or forgeting their passwords. However, rather than hunt down the password or having it emailed to them (which is what I and probably most adults do), teens are more apt to just start over again, beginning with an entirely new email address, creating an entirely new profile and possibly even moving to a completely different social networking site (since they do seem to be in abundance lately).

Boyd notes that this behavior is indicative of teens who are all about creating and recreating their identity. What better way to do this than with social networking sites. Create a new profile, a new you and meet completely new friends. She has an interesting quote, “I should note that I don’t think that the answer is “help teens remember passwords.” I actually think that this tendency to shed is advantageous in the way that we shed clothes every year because the “old me” is no longer relevant. Technology is a bit too obsessed with remembering; there’s a lot of value in forgetting.”

So, where does this leave teen librarians? It’s a hazard of the occupation I guess and all the more reason why we need to remain on our toes.

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.

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.

Gaming and libraries seems to be a topic on the tip of everyone’s tongue here lately. Shifted Librarian, Jenny Levine has been blogging notes about the Gaming, Learning and Society conference which took place in Madison, Wisconsin last week and I imagine the biblioblogshere will soon be buzzing about the much anticipated ALA TechSource Gaming, Learning and Libraries symposium taking place later this month on July 22-24. All this recent attention on gaming and libraries has brought a shift in focus from viewing gaming simply as a recreational activity to acknowledging its potential as a literacy/educational tool.

At ALA this past June, OCLC Vice President George Needham conducted a presentation called Gaming, Information Literacy and the College Student, which ultimately attracted a lot of stimulating discussion and criticism. Although the focus of this presentation was directed more towards academic libraries, I think there is a lot here that would make for some interesting discussion amongst teen librarians also. Relying on recent research (2003 Environmental Scan: Pattern Recognition, Pew Internet and American Life Project, Marc Prensky) Needham’s presentation attempted to encourage librarians to think ahead a few years and consider the information literacy needs of the graduating class of 2010. Pegged with a multiple of descriptive, if not stereotypical names (net gens, millennials, gen y, gen me), this generation is especially known for its video gaming enthusiasm.

According to Needham’s presentation, gamers believe:

• there are multiple paths to victory
• failure along the way is to be expected
• leaders can’t be trusted
• life should be fun

Taking these traits into consideration, Needham suggests that we design library tools with gaming technology in mind so users can essentially learn on their own (remember: multiple paths to victory, failure to be expected, life should be fun) without having to turn to the “information priest” (leaders can’t be trusted) for assistance. He does not necessarily advocate that we completely forfeit our role of helping students find information, only that we allow them the opportunity to “play” first and ask when they feel they need the help.

Needham said that in this environment, librarians should focus on “in demand training,” helping students when they hit an obstacle, not before they start. Even then, he said, librarians shouldn’t say that they are providing formal training, but should say things like “let me show you a short cut,” the kind of language students use with one another all the time.

Many critics have since taken issue with Needham’s use of metaphor (digital native vs. digital immigrant, librarian as information priest), while others have take issue with his attempt to make gaming behavior synonymous with information seeking behavior. There is a lot of concern that allowing for “failure” is the same things as lower expectations and as such would be detrimental to the learning process. There also seems to be a lot of concern about taking the “librarian” out of the process and diminishing their role to mere “shortcut pointer-outer”. Would designing library technology tools so they are more game-like, more intuitive and trial-by-error be better for teens? Would this be considered the same as speaking to them on their own terms or is it simply “lowering the bar”?

When mulling over this myself, I can’t help but think about a presentation I saw at PLA last year called Making Traditional Library Services Teen Friendly. Mary K. Chelton was among those presenting that day. Well known for her research on teens and information seeking behavior, one of the things she kept repeating was how librarians tend to suffer from an “ideal user” syndrome. Attitudes need to change, she said, we need to start treating teens according to who they are, not how we wish them to be. I have since come to believe that this philosophy is key to providing successful services to teens; however, critics may still view it as another example of lowering standards. Reference-anxiety is another thing that needs to be taken into consideration here. Can we really expect teens to admit that they can’t do something and to come for help?

Current research on teens and information seeking indicates that whatever information literacy we are teaching them isn’t working very well. They make errors when they search and have difficulty combining word variations. But research in this area is incomplete and I have yet to see anything that really substantiates whether other tools such as podcasting or vodcasting might actually help in this area. So what do ya’ll think? Is it time to push for more alternative, non-traditional methods when it comes to teaching teens how to find information? Does the answer rest with gaming technology? Or do we need to take this thing back to the drawing board?

Recently, we received this comment on the Alt. Teen Services Blog:

MySpace - Libraries on MySpace appeal to teens!”

Is this true, or just an aphorism? I’ve heard from teens that MySpace is a good source of library information, but I’ve also heard from the same teens that they want MySpace for themselves. They’re not pleased with organizations, especially ones they consider to be “authority” (read: school or library) being on their turf.

Here is my response, which hopefully propels us into a nice discussion:

With the large number of libraries creating MySpace profiles, I find myself wondering if teens want a public authority such as a library on their friends list. Does a teen feel pressured into adding the library on their contact list? The teen that just “added you” may have done so to be polite, but is actually annoyed that the library will be able to view their personal profile.

I have met young adults that refuse to add the library onto their friends list. “Um, I don’t think you want to KNOW what is on MY PROFILE”. And that’s okay if a teen doesn’t want to add the library. In fact, I have both a private and professional MySpace, and encourage teens to do the same if they feel splintered between the Library MySpace and their personal MySpace.
But I’ve also run into teens who LOVE having the Library on their friends list. The library is in their top 10, and we banter back and forth with quirky library comments. One teen commented, “OMG…books can be dangerous when thrown at high speeds?! Why didn’t anyone warn me…”. When we encourage these library-related comments, we are accepting teens for their quirkiness and strengthening our library relationship with them.

Still, there are the teens that feel befriending the library would limit their ability to “be themselves” on MySpace. They may dread the thought of the librarian reading profile comments and seeing private photos.

I’m curious as to what other librarians think about this question. Are we invading a teen’s private space when we add them as a friend?

The teen space at London Public Library received a makeover! Grafitti artist Bryan Jesney painted the neighboring stairs, making the space more colorful and inviting. Wouldn’t you love a bit of paint and creativity to spice up the space for teens?

View the entire photoset here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/londonpubliclibrary/sets/72157594415192325/

AND the teen space has MONTHLY performances by INDY bands. What a way to create a teen movement and identity.

I had to post this video of the Fayetteville Public Library Teen Fashion Show. The nationally recognized blog that Jenine mentions is us! This fashion show is so amazing, and the ultimate display of teen empowerment and involvement. Way to go Jenine and the Fayettville Teens. And it ALL STARTED WITH A BOOK!

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

- - -

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

By way of the ALA direct Newsletter, I came across this Teen Read Week music video.
Pretty cool!

I recently received a Myspace friend request from a band that I had formerly never heard of called The Remus Lupins. I of course gave them a listen and discovered that I really like their music. This was the second Harry Potter related band I had heard of, the first being Harry and the Potters and I decided it was time to investigate this coincidence. Here is a little about what I found.

Both of these bands and many others are bands that fall under the fairly new genre of Wizard Rock. According to Wikipedia “Wizard Rock is a musical movement dating from 2002 that consists of a number of bands formed by young musicians playing songs about J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter literary phenomenon. The lyrics are usually humorous and simple, and many bands write songs from the point of view of a particular character in the books, usually the character who features in the band’s name.” To my surprise this is becoming a very popular genre. A quick Myspace search turns up dozens of Wizard Rock bands and you can even find the Wizard Rock groups page, which is a discussion board and forum for fans of the genre. This page includes links to many Wizard Rock band pages with streaming music. Many of these bands tend to go for a rock or indie sound but I have found some that lean toward electronica, folk, or just the simple sound of a singer-songwriter.

One of the aspects of Wizard Rock that I find most fascinating is how interested most of these bands are in promoting literacy. Almost every one of these bands on their Myspace or website mention that one of their goals is to promote literacy. Some even have links to sites or pdfs you can download explaining how to help promote literacy in your own area.

Also of note is the Wizard Rockumentary, a group who is filming a documentary about Wizard Rock. According to the website “ The Wizard Rockumentary is a feature length documentary exploring Harry Potter fandom, the Wizard Rock community, and the goals of these musicians to promote literacy. “ Production is currently underway for this documentary but there is already a fair amount of interesting material to view on both their website and their Myspace page.

These bands have some great possibilities for young adult librarians. Many of them will play in a library making for a great program. Given the proclivity of most of these bands to promote literacy why not find one nearby and work with them on some sort of literacy program or project. A viewing of the Wizard Rockumentary, once it is released, would also make for a fun program for the teens in your library. There are countless ways to tap into this as a young adult librarian, but simply as fans of young adult literature and in the case of most of us, fans of Harry Potter it seems important just to be aware that these bands are out there and some are becoming quite popular. Below is a list of a few of these bands with links to either their Websites and/or their Myspace pages.

Harry and the Potters – Website / Myspace

The Remus Lupins – Website / Myspace

Draco and the Malfoys – Website / Myspace

The Whomping Willows – Myspace

Dobby and the house Elves – Myspace

The Hermione Crookshanks Experience – Myspace

Having a Graphic novel collection has become a mostly accepted practice within public libraries. However, very few libraries, at least in my experience, collect comic books. I am currently going through the process of proposing that my library start a comic book collection and I thought sharing this process and idea might be beneficial for some out there.

While we do contain the trade paperback versions of a variety of comic titles in our graphic novel collection, our TAB (Teen Advisory Board) and I both think that our young adult patrons would be better served if we collected the comics themselves when they come out. This way, the patrons would be able to read the comics when they come out instead of waiting months for the story arc to be completed and released in a trade. Also, having this collection will help young adults who are spending their money on comics to have the option of saving that money and reading them at our library. Not to mention, if it is the library’s job to collect what its patrons want to read, then for young adults that means collecting comics because for many young adults comic books are a preferred type of reading.

So how would this type of collection work? The answer to that is simple; just like a periodical collection. There is very little difference between a comic book and a magazine. However your library handles popular magazines, those same policies and procedures should work just the same for comic books. Comics also cost about the same as a magazine, or less, usually averaging between about $2 to $4 dollars an issue. If you can buy an item for just $2 and it circulates even 5 or 6 times, that was $2 dollars well spent.

If you can find a place to order them and have them delivered great, but getting the titles straight from your local comic book store seems to be the way to go in my mind. Few sources could be more valuable in establishing this collection then your local comic book store owner. These owners will know everything you could want to know about what titles are popular, which ones might be pushing the limits, content wise, for your community and anything else you would like to know. The best part is that comic store owners are usually very excited to partner with libraries, and are often even willing to offer discounts, which is the magic word for many libraries.

The inclusion of a comic collection could really go a long way in appealing to young adults, and potentially bringing new people into the library. There are some libraries out there that have been doing this successfully. One such example would be the Kalamazoo Public Library in Kalamazoo, MI.

If anybody out there reading this has started such a collection or has one in their library, I would love to hear how it has worked for you. Any info that can be used to advocate for a collection like this would be helpful. I will be sure to keep you all posted as I hopefully get to go through this process.

Video Gaming has started to become a popular thing in libraries over the last year or two. Video game collections are being developed and video game programming is all the rage. There are doubtless many reasons for this; however one of the top reasons for the popularity of the programming is that video gaming is largely a social event. The games that have become most popular for these programs are ones that 2 or 4 people play together, often against each other, such as Mario Kart, Smash Bros, or Dance Dance Revolution. These are all very fun games to play, but they are even fun simply to watch, and they all appeal to a broad range of people. In the case of Dance Dance Revolution it has the added benefit of being a physical game which seems to be a large attractor.

So, you’re probably asking what my point is. Well, there is a new system coming out in the fall or early winter, by Nintendo called the Nintendo Wii. This system is getting a lot of press because it is going to be a very different type of videogame system. It has two features that are very special about it that I believe are going to make it the premier system for library use.

The first important feature is the controller. On a normal video game controller you simply press buttons or a joystick to manipulate figures on the screen. The controller for the Wii however will work largely upon movement. It will use infrared technology to capture how you are holding or moving it and transfer that movement to the game. This means that when you are playing a golf game you need to swing the controller like a club to hit the ball, or in a shooting game you need to point it at the screen where you want to shoot. This movement takes over where the Dance Dance Revolution left off in adding a physical aspect to video games. Not only does it sound fun to play games like this but they will be ideal for a group environment. Just imagine watching four people violently swinging around their controllers like tennis rackets while playing in your library.

The second important feature of Nintendo in general, but also Nintendo Wii, is that the games are often for everyone. They try very hard to make games that appeal to both kids and adults. Not only do these games appeal to every one but they are trying to develop totally new types of games to appeal to non gamers, such as the elderly. If you don’t believe me check out “A Game for All Ages” in the May 14^th issue of time magazine. If they can make games that appeal to more people, and are appropriate for all ages it would be the perfect system to use in the library. With budgets being the way they are many libraries can’t afford to have numerous gaming systems, so one system that appeals to many people is ideal. By the way, the Wii will also be significantly cheaper then its two counterparts the X-box 360 and the Playstation 3. It’s projected to cost about $200-$250 as opposed to the $399 of the X-box or the possible $500 of the upcoming Playstation 3.

So, librarians, be ready for the Wii. If you are already using video gaming in your libraries set aside some money for a Wii this fall and you won’t be sorry. If you haven’t already jumped into the world of gaming at your library, consider starting with the Wii, it will be a lot of a fun, and if you do it fast you might be the first place to own one in your area and the kids will come for that reason alone. For more info on the Wii check out Nintendo’s website or IGN.com.

Side note. While I don’t claim to be an expert on video gaming in libraries, I do know a fair amount about video games themselves, and about hosting tournaments or game events at least in small libraries. I however am not quite sure what you as readers want to or need to know. If you ask questions I can do my best at answering them and will know how to go about blogging on this subject.

In December a link was posted to VOYA’s December teen pop culture quiz. This April they added a new quiz, bringing the total up to 18, 10 of which are posted on their website . I scored a whopping 30 out of 58 which according to their scoring system is not so great. Give it a try yourself and see how you do.