Teen Trax

Patrick Jones is speaking this morning at "Teen Trax," which is the SC State Library's latest entry in their series of yearly mega-workshops. It is fabulous to be in a room full of people who are (at least mostly) as enthusiastic about teen services as I am, and I've gotten some fabulous ideas about what the library can do to build relationships with teenagers.

Like adding comic books to the collection. Which I would love to do. There are so many great reasons for it, not least is that teens (especially teen boys) love them. They're cheap, they're bright and attractive, and, as Patrick pointed out, they weed themselves. Which, after our current experience with weeding all five libraries, is a major point in their favor. But those pesky adults get in the way. The board would question the decision to include them in the collection, the acquisitions librarian would mutter about them, and every staff member and adult in the library would think it was evidence of my poor management skills. Encouraging teenagers to come and be teenagers in the library is not something the rest of the staff want. We don't even have a teen area in any of the branches, with the possible exception of Jefferson, which has a teen corner of the porch. In the spare space we can carve out of the children's area, of course.

Adults seem to get in the way of teen services all the time. Some of it deliberately - let's not spend money on them, let's shush them when the get rowdy, let's limit what they can borrow and what they can look at and when they can do it. And some of it is unintentional, but no less damaging. How do so many people forget completely what it was like to be a teenager? Was it such a horrible experience that they have blocked it out? Or so awful that they don't want to be reminded of it by interacting with anyone in their teenage years ever again? I hated being a teenager. It was a gdawful few years. Which is all the more reason to try and make the experience slightly less horrific for the poor kids who are going through it now.

Patrick has some great points, and some of the resources like the 40 Developmental Assets and Frontline's study of the teenage brain are fascinating. If you have the chance to hear him, I highly recommend it. (Or you could just go read his book.) But should it alarm me that I got these insights from a man whose life-defining experience was being bled on by Rick Flair in 1992?