Attracting teenagers to the library may seem like an impossible feat, but initiating engaging teen programs may just be the ticket to success. Whether you are the new director of young adult services or an experienced children’s and YA librarian looking for new ways to bring teens into the library, finding the right programs can help you build a stronger library for your young patrons.
Need some tips to get you started?
Today’s How-To-Do-It Tip comes from Connecting Young Adults and Libraries: A How-To-Do-It Manual, Fourth Edition by Michele Gorman and Tricia Suellentrop.
“What Are the Keys to Developing Successful Teen Programs?
• Choose a popular topic. While trying to guess what is popular with teens is not easy, an LST should be able to determine which topics have broad popularity by asking, by looking at the collection, and by observing what teens are doing online and listening to, reading, and discussing with friends. Just as important are topics that enjoy deep rather than broad popularity. For example, the majority of teens are not interested in subjects like anime and cosplay, live action role-playing games like Dungeons & Dragons, or slam poetry, but teens who are interested in these topics are usually fanatics who look for any opportunity to pursue their interests.
• Partner with schools, school groups, and other youth-serving organizations. Whether the partner provides information or an audience, these programs will succeed in terms of attendance, and you may be able to capture the partner group’s audience for other library programs.
• Promote, don’t just publicize. The role of your library’s marketing and community relations department is to provide you with publicity materials; your job is to use those materials to promote your programs.
• Make connections to what is happening in the lives of teenagers. This means planning and carrying out programs that cover necessary topics like PSAT or SAT prep classes, funding for college, alternatives to college, etc. You can also make connections to the calendar, to the curriculum, and to the state education standards.
• Think “hands-on.” The best model for teen programs is not story time, in which you perform and the audience watches, but toddler time, in which you provide an interactive experience consistent with the developmental needs of the child. Too often LSTs use the children’s performer–audience model, and this doesn’t work as well for teens. Most teens want to do, not just watch.
• Youth involvement. Teens can be involved in so many ways, from coming up with ideas, to preparing promotional materials, to actually doing the program themselves. What matters is that teens have an opportunity to “own” a program. Once they feel vested in it, they are more likely to show up, participate, and bring their friends.
• Define success and tailor expectations based on the needs of your library and teens. A teen book discussion group with 50 teens in attendance might be a “success” on the stat sheet, but it won’t be for the teens who attended but didn’t get a chance to speak. While there are some exceptions, remember that in many teen programs there is an inverse relationship between the quantity of attendees and the quality of the experience. At the same time, you must define your expectations. To say, “Well, the three teens who were here enjoyed it” works for a book discussion group or a hands-on craft activity because these kinds of interactive programs work well with small groups. To say this for a large-scale gaming tournament or a Battle of the Bands doesn’t work because limited-interaction programs intended for large groups need an audience to be successful. You need to be honest with yourself, but you also need to be honest with your superiors to help them understand that teen programming is not as simple as children’s programs. It is not just a matter of booking a performer, putting out some flyers, and waiting for the parents to bring the kids. Moreover, while there is nothing wrong with enjoyment being the only “outcome” of a children’s program featuring a clown, teens need more than that. If you are to focus on the outcomes for teens, you must stop focusing so strongly on the output for the library.”
-Excerpted from: Connecting Young Adults and Libraries: A How-To-Do-It Manual, Fourth Edition, pp. 227-228. ©2009 by Neal-Schuman Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved.
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