Teen Book Review Program

I have been working on a young adult project at work, in an attempt to bring some teens into the library. In my own head, such a thing sounds like a piece of cake - the town has a nice library with a good YA collection, and the town has teenagers - should work, right?

The first big hurdle was coming up with a program that won't cost us any money - we don't have a budget for YA programming, at this point. The second jump was coming up with a program that will be fairly self-sustaining and somewhat long-term - ie, not a one-shot-deal.

After putting together the new teen blog, Teen Spot, I thought it might be a good idea to come up with a teen blog that's a bit more "interactive" of sorts. I was also toying with the idea of having the YA crowd write book reviews (because though the reviews I read for collection development are "fine," they are definitely NOT all that useful for teens themselves) - I put the concepts together, and voila, Teen Spot Reviews!

So far, I have spent A LOT of time on this - the blogs alone took hours to get "right," as I wanted them to be somewhat unique in look. I have tossed numerous e-mails back and forth with the librarian and English Dept Head at the local high school, hoping they could spread the word, and maybe offer some extra credit to students who participate. I've made posters and flyers, and crafted a consent form, available online, in the library, and at the high school...

To date, I have one person signed up. But, I did hear that the school newspaper is doing a story on the program, so hopefully word will spread, and some kids will come in.

Library Talk Forum - Comments Wanted

So, am I missing something? Why do librarians love listservs so much - especially as oppsed to forums?

This is a serious question.

Even though I have been using the internet for many years, I never seemd to "get into" listservs as much as I did forums. Now that I am a librarian, I subscribe to several listservs - and I find that I simply cannot effectively read, or keep up with, the very active ones. I find this frustrating, especially when it comes to lists that often have a lot of great ideas and information. It seems that no matter how many times people are reminded to cut and paste appropriately, there's a ton of repeated info, and I find it nearly impossible to follow a conversation. And if two or more topics are being actively discussed, forget it. Am I dense?

In an attempt to address this issue (and perhaps it's only an issue for me), I put up Library Talk, a discussion forum for librarians. I was hoping that people might check it out and be swayed by a forum's "conversational" style. It's had a few visits, but not much action, yet. I even posted a question to a YA list that I subscribe to, and tried to nudge people to reply on the board, but no one did... (I did, however, receive a huge number of great replies to the list, but, again, sometimes it was hard to follow.)

So, are librarians anti-forum? Should I simply stop whining? Or should I let the board ride a while and see if it picks up?

I do hope you'll check it out, and either post comments to the forum, or here. (Yes, you have to register, but that is simply to cut down on spam....)

You go, Girl.

A great quote from one of my favorite authors, Jennifer Weiner:

Salem: Why did you choose to visit Salem?
Jennifer Weiner: Short answer: The library invited me. And I am all about the libraries.

Here is the full online chat session.

And, a personal "yay!" for her comment about not wishing she was in Weight Watchers....

It's Baa-aaack....

After days, days I tell you, of playing with WordPress, libraryland is finally back in action.

I originally created libraryland during grad school as a resource site for library students. It was fairly popular, but I gave up the site when I changed domains. It's now been re-created as a multi-page blog, so that people can aggregate and be notified as the site is updated.

I hope you'll check it out, and add it to your reading list. I am also looking to add original resource content, so if you have a paper, presentation, pathfinder - anything library-esque that you've written - that you would like to see online, please let me know!