Job Responsiblities

"Are you a fan of impromptu dance contests?  Do you enjoy in-depth conversations with teens about their favorite video game characters and manga titles?  Are you willing to endure a pie to the face in well-earned celebrations? We’re looking for you!

The Greenwood Public Library is seeking an enthusiastic, creative individual to provide high-quality customer service to adults and teens 40 hours per week. This person will assist with research, reader’s advisory and computing needs, programming and supervision in the library’s popular Teen Room, and collection development for Teen Fiction as well as some Adult non-fiction."

--job description taken from the Greenwood Public Library in Greenwood, IN

Examples taken from the Wells County Public Library TeenZone newsletter

Libraries are a great place for promoting creativity in teens.  Reader's advisory, pointing teens towards books that will get them reading, is a great way to get their imagination working and to inspire a love for writing/story-telling.  This job description mentions programming, and looking to the examples in my own library system, teen programming is another way to get teens to be creative, and not just with words.  The teen librarians here throw Iron Chef-style cooking contests, provide tools to create personal jewelry and t-shirts, or host comic-drawing or melted crayon art nights.

Along with providing outlets for their imagination, programming is also a great way to bring like-minded teens together and create a sense of community, of belonging.  I feel like this is a very important aspect, that's unfortunately looked over in a lot of cases.  Teens are working out their identities and starting to establish their own space in society.  It's confusing, and it's tough for those who are past that stage to remember exactly what it was like.  A lot of my classmates have posted in the discussions that they see this negative attitude of adult employees towards teen patrons in their library.  It would mean a lot to teens to not receive that negativity when they come to the library, from neither the adults nor their peers.

Let's not forget how librarians can assist middle- and high-school students in learning proper research techniques.  We have the resources, we just need to advertise them to teens.  Making time to sit down, one-on-one if necessary, to teach the berry-picking method and how to evaluate sources.  These are skills after all that will help them in college and possibly later on in their careers.  And as many students are now going on to seek higher education, it's important for teen departments to provide materials to prepare them.  Study aids and college guides are available to loan in most teen areas, as are pamphlets and other recruitment information for the military, if a student decides to take that route after high school.  It would be great for the patrons if a librarian was knowledgeable of the local colleges and universities, and could talk with teens about them.  (This may also be a good opportunity to set up a "community liaison".)

Readers' services is another way to really help out students.  Many times, for projects both during the school year and the summer, teens are coming into the library to find something to read for their English class.  Sometimes they have a list to choose from, sometimes they're given free will.  However, not every teen is a reader and they don't know what to even look for.  If a librarian is up to date on current YA hits (or has read some good ones that are under the radar!) and can ask the right questions to get a sense of what the teen might enjoy, then that librarian just may bring out the reader in them.