Work (?) environment

I think anyone in a public library would agree...youth service librarians have the best areas to work in!  It's part of our job to create fun spaces to get our younger patrons in the library, so it's no wonder.

Children's areas are bright, colorful, and full of imagination.  Teen areas also need some imagination, but they need to convey a more mature tone than the children's.  The area needs to be a place where they can hang out, but can also study.  Privacy needs to be considered as well.  Setting up an effective teen's area can be difficult.

Here is the Teen Zone of the Wells County Public Library, Ossian Branch, where I work.  While we work to anticipate our patrons' needs and provide all the resources we can, it suffers from a lack of space.  Those little couches are cool, but just on the other side of them are the DVDs.  As you can imagine, teens don't want to hang out right behind the family of four arguing over whether to get the Lego movie again or try a Doc McStuffins movie.  The TeenZone is also directly in front of the front desk.  As a result, students either sit in the children's area, in the back of the building (more and larger tables are available there as well), or on the other side of the DVD/audio book shelving, where we can't see them from the front desk.

The Main Branch of Wells County also had that issue, but created a makeshift wall with spinners.  According to the librarians there, it made a huge and almost immediate difference!  Teens feel more comfortable hanging out with their friends now with a degree of privacy.  That space included couches, chairs, and a Nintendo Wii!

Pictured: a teen actually having fun at his local library!















The people also make up part of your work environment.  Most likely, you'll be working with creative people.  Hopefully, the support they show to the teens extends to you as you learn the ropes.  I have been lucky in such a way.  I'm really not a crafty person, but I've been picking up some tricks thanks to the other ladies I work with.  Not to brag but I did make that display board in the first picture, along with the paper bats that I jerry-rigged with some fishing wire and magnets to hang from the ceiling.  (Literally, I shouldn't brag about that.)  I also became really good at creating facial hair out of construction paper for the No-Shave November theme for our display wall.

Spiderman and Jace have never looked better!