THE OFFICIAL JOURNAL OF THE YOUNG ADULT LIBRARY SERVICES ASSOCIATION

young adult 2012 library library services services

VOLUME 12 | NUMBER 2 WINTER 2014 ISSN 1541-4302 $17.50 DIYY

INSIDE:

EVERYONE DESERVES A PLACE IN THE LIBRARY WHY SHOULD LIBRARIES CARE ABOUT TEENS & TECHNOLOGY LEARN TO CODE: IT’S A LIFE SKILL TEENS, TECH & AND MORE.... LEARNING ISSUE Life’s little to-do list.

Estate Plan

Guardianship

Beneficiaries

Planned Giving to YALSA

for more. Visit www.ALA.org/PlannedGiving

hile making plans for you and your family’s ALA W future, consider making a planned gift to ALA. Join a growing number of ALA members and friends LEGACY who want ALA to span generations. SOCIETY The official journal of The Young adulT librarY ServiceS aSSociaTion young adult library services

VOLUME 12 | NUMBER 2 WINTER 2014 ISSN 1541-4302

Your ALA Plus: 4 Be a Leader by Knowing Yourself 2 From the Editor By Jamie Watson Linda W. Braun 3 From the President YALSA Perspectives Shannon Peterson 6 Be Flexible with the 2014 Teen Tech WeekTM 37 Guidelines for Authors Theme DIY @ your library® 37 Index to Advertisers By Carla Avitabile and Christie Gibrich 38 The YALSA Update 9 Why Should Libraries Care About Teens and Technology? By Tiffany Williams

Best Practices 13 Everyone Deserves a Place in the Library By Sarah Ludwig

16 The Mobile LAM (Library, Archive & Museum): New Space for Engagement About This Cover By Angela Rovatti-Leonard This Teen Tech Week™ (March 9–15, 2013), YALSA 20 An Interview with Author Lorie Ann Grover invites you to DIY @ your library!® Demonstrate the value your library gives to the community by off ering teens a space to extend learning beyond the classroom Hot Spot: Teens, Tech, & Learning where they can explore, create and share content. From 22 A Learning Lab Makes It in St. Paul maker spaces, to coding classes to online knitting clubs, By Jennifer Larson libraries can leverage the do-it-yourself theme to show how you connect in meaningful ways with the teens in 25 Learn to Code: It’s a Life Skill your community. Offi cial Teen Tech Week Products, By Jessica Klein such as the poster on the cover, are available at www. alastore.org. 28 Badges: Show What You Know By Sheryl Grant

33 Teens and Tech: What the Research Says By Kathryn Zickuhr 2014–2015 YALSA Editorial Advisory Board (providing advisory input for the journal) Angela Leeper, Chair, Richmond, Va.; Michelle Bayuk, Deerfi eld, Ill.; from the Jan Chapman, Strongsville Oh.; Diane Fuller, Baltitmore, Md.; Laura Lehner, The ViewHudson from Oh.; ALA Nicola McDonald, Brooklyn, N.Y.

YALSA Executive Director Beth Yoke Editor Editor Linda W. Braun Linda W. Braun Circulation Young Adult Library Services (ISSN 1541-4302) is published four times a year by the American Library Association (ALA), 50 E. Huron St., Chicago, ver the past few years it’s been really exciting to see how IL 60611. It is the offi cial publication of the Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA), a division of ALA. Subscription price: members of technology is taking on a new role in libraries. No longer YALSA, $25 per year, included in membership dues; nonmembers, $70 per is technology just a resource for looking up information year in the U.S.; $80 in Canada, Mexico, and other countries. Back issues O within one year of current issue, $17.50 each. Periodicals class postage paid on Google or in a library database. Instead it’s an integral part at Chicago, Illinois and additional mailing offi ces. POSTMASTER: Send of helping teens in the community learn about a topic in which address changes to Young Adult Library Services, 50 E. Huron St., Chicago, IL 60611. Members: Address changes and inquiries should be sent to they are interested, gain skills, and get involved. Teens use library Membership Department, Changes to Young Adult Library Services, 50 E. technology to research topics and to create content, collaborate Huron St., Chicago, IL 60611. Nonmember subscribers: Subscriptions, orders, changes of address, and inquiries should be sent to Changes to Young Adult with others, and connect to experts in a fi eld of interest. Library Services, Subscriptions, 50 E. Huron St., Chicago, IL 60611; 1-800- YALSA’s 2014 Teen Tech WeekTM theme DIY @ your 545-2433, press 5; fax: (312) 944-2641; [email protected]. library® is a perfect recognition of the way teens use technology in Statement of Purpose libraries. It’s all about doing. Young Adult Library Services is the offi cial journal of the Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA), a division of the American Library That’s what you will read about in this issue of YALS. Carla Association. YALS primarily serves as a vehicle for continuing education Avitabile and Christie Gilbrich’s article on the Teen Tech Week for librarians serving young adults, ages twelve through eighteen. It will include articles of current interest to the profession, act as a showcase for best theme will certainly give you a lot of ideas about how to create practices, provide news from related fi elds, publish recent research related to tech opportunities for teens in the library. Then read Tiff any YA librarianship, and will spotlight signifi cant events of the organization and off er in-depth reviews of professional literature. YALS will also serve as the Williams’s piece that helps library staff think about how to connect offi cial record of the organization. the doing to learning. Next you might check out Jess Klein’s article Production on the power of Web making for teens and communities. That Cadmus Communications should motivate you to think about how you can help teens be Advertising active members of the community through their use of technology. Bill Spilman, Innovative Media Solutions; 1-877-878-3260; fax (309) 483- Also, make sure to read what Sheryl Grant has to say about 2371; e-mail [email protected]. View our media kit at www.ala.org/yalsa/mediakit. YALS accepts advertising for goods or services badging as a way to show others what you (and teens) know. of interest to the library profession and librarians in service to youth in This issue of YALS also highlights ALA’s recent leadership particular. It encourages advertising that informs readers and provides clear communication between vendor and buyer. YALS adheres to ethical and institute that YALSA member Jamie Watson took part in. Plus, commonly accepted advertising practices and reserves the right to reject any Sarah Ludwig eloquently speaks out about the importance of advertisement not suited to the above purposes or not consistent with the aims and policies of ALA. Acceptance of advertising in YALS does not imply serving all teens no matter what their background is. offi cial endorsement by ALA of the products or services advertised. When it comes to technology there is always something new Manuscripts to learn. This issue of YALS helps you to do that. YALS Manuscripts and letters pertaining to editorial content should be sent to YALSA, 50 E. Huron St., Chicago, IL 60611; e-mail: yalseditor@gmail. com. Manuscripts will be sent out for review according to YALS’s established referee procedures. Visit www.ala.org/yalsa for further information. Indexing, Abstracting, and Microfilm Young Adult Library Services is indexed in Library Literature, Library &Information Science Abstracts, and Current Index to Journals in Education. Microfi lm copies of Journal of Youth Services in Libraries and its predecessor, Top of the News, are available from ProQuest/Bell & Howell, 300 N. Zeeb Rd., Ann Arbor, MI 48106. The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992. ∞ ©2012 American Library Association All materials in this journal subject to copyright by the American Library Association may be photocopied for the noncommercial purpose of scientifi c or educational advancement granted by Sections 107 and 108 of the Copyright Revision Act of 1976. For other photocopying, reprinting, or translating, address requests to the ALA Offi ce of Rights and Permissions.

2 YALS Young Adult Library Services Winter 2014 from the President Shannon Peterson

Everyone can participate. promoting services that “are a complex a program at Learning happens by doing. alchemy of designed and emergent elements ALA Annual Challenge is constant. in a process of experimentation and fl ux.” Conference. Everything is interconnected. I’m thrilled that this issue of YALS And while has a number of articles describing projects I’ve been busy n the last issue of YALS, Mimi Ito and and programs that I think illustrate being your Crystle Martin described connected perfectly some of the key components of President, Ilearning and shared ideas of how to connected learning (interest-driven and they’ve done something truly amazing. relate that educational model to library peer-supported learning, production- After an initial meeting via Google+ services to teens. I’m excited about driven and openly networked projects) and Hangouts, in which I described the connected learning for a number of reasons: showcase the very diff erent ways in which themes of the program and where I it promotes an increased connection they (and you) are able to do it. While imagined that we might go with it, they between in- and out-of-school networks, I still have you, let’s get back to what I came up with something that perfectly advocates for multiple entry points to started with. Those phrases, actually all encapsulates those aforementioned learning and opportunities for teens, connected learning design principles, awesome design principles. Mirroring and demands that stakeholders (parents, sound pretty awesome, don’t they? Imagine the essence of connected learning, they’re educators, technology makers, youth) how invigorating your work life would be if breaking outside of a one-time, one-sided link together to envision and create real they (along with support, structure, and a panel model to create a framework in change. But do you know what I think is healthy budget, of course) were the mantra which we can actively participate and the most intriguing? Connected learning of your principal or library director? explore together in Las Vegas, but also is not a fi xed curriculum but rather an Imagine if we not only provided teens with engage and discuss from wherever we are. approach that if done successfully, will programs and services that allowed for this Look for blog posts, hangouts, and good shift and fl uctuate as quickly as (and kind of play and experimentation, but built conversation throughout the rest of my perhaps in unison with) the teens that structures in your own work circles and presidential year related to connected we serve. According to the authors of the professional development plans that did learning and how by embracing its tenants, Connected Learning Report—http://bit. the same thing? we might create stronger networks and ly/CLreport—connected learning is “not Part of my job as President of support systems to prepare our teens for a new approach but an ongoing, changing YALSA is to appoint and work with a social, work, and economic readiness. I’m one with a core set of goals and values” group of members to plan and implement ready for the challenge, are you? YALS

Winter 2014 Young Adult Library Services YALS 3 feature Your ALA

Early in the program we were given Be a Leader by a leadership self-assessment test to rank our strengths and weaknesses. When I returned to work, I gave the test to my staff to give them the chance, on a volunteer Knowing Yourself basis and anonymously, to fi ll it out about me. That way I could see how well I had assessed myself. I was pleased to see that By Jamie Watson my self-awareness pretty much matched the staff ’s view, with one exception—all mentioned one weakness that they saw in me that I hadn’t recognized. To me, what was interesting about this was that s someone who loves to learn and · Community engagement it is defi nitely something that I recognize has been fortunate to work for a · Strategy, innovation, and change about myself, but I hadn’t considered it a Avariety of libraries that support · Leadership development weakness. Perspective is everything! professional development, a “leadership training” was not necessarily a new Participants were taught by great concept to me. I attended the wonderful leaders, Maureen Sullivan, past ALA Reflect Reflect Reflect Maryland Library Leadership Institute president, and Kathryn Diess, Content I’m sure you’ve attended seminars, just in 2000, where I had my fi rst exposure Strategist for the Association of College like I have, that are all work, work, work. to the enneagram learning styles that I and Research Libraries, each with many You go home a combination of energized have ever since continued to use (and years of library leadership experience. All in and exhausted. Then, after re-entry, and teach) in my professional and personal attendance were librarians. This was a great some time, much of what you learned life. In addition, I have attended a variety way to create a shared frame of reference. unfortunately goes by the wayside. But, of other workshops and classes over the One thing that stood out to me was because as a part of the leadership institute years. Without a doubt, however, the ALA that this institute did not focus on a future participants had time at the end of every Leadership Institute was the strongest of libraries guessing game, or provide an day to refl ect on the day and make some one of these types of programs that I have opportunity for a libraries-are-dying weep notes, there was a chance to solidify the attended. fest. In fact, the way I describe the week learning and guarantee that everyone As the ALA website states, the is, “Put your own oxygen mask on fi rst would take back what they learned and put “Leadership Institute is a unique 4-day before trying to help those around you.” it into practice. immersive leadership development This was about developing YOUR OWN What did I write in my refl ections program for future library leaders.”1 leadership strengths fi rst before attempting every day? SLOW DOWN! Every Attendees were selected from a pool of to make changes or save your library. day, a concept was taught related to the applicants and the program was facilitated Participants learned that self-awareness is importance of being deliberate, of being and attended by librarians, but it was not considered one of the fi rst areas to focus strategic. Sometimes in a busy work day, library focused. on when planning one’s own leadership you (and others) make knee-jerk decisions. The agenda for the Institute focused growth. Everyone had to answer the This sometimes can’t be avoided, but it on the following topics: question, “What personal qualities support shouldn’t be done as a regular practice. It’s your work as a leader and give your work O.K. to tell someone that you need time to · Leadership its own distinctive style?” We learned that make the best decision. · Interpersonal competence the answer varies from person to person. · Power and infl uence We are not the same. Focusing on Practical Applications JAMIE WATSON is the Collection Development Coordinator for the Each participant brought a case study Baltimore County Public Library. of a management issue to the seminar.

4 YALS Young Adult Library Services Winter 2014 Watson

Throughout the week, a small group would communication without really knowing strong, thought-provoking articles about work on the case studies applying the what is behind it. An eff ective leader will improving leadership styles. Thanks to leadership techniques learned during the frequently say, “Help me understand why our library’s Zinio subscription, I’m now a institute. As the “client” we needed to not get you wrote this. What problem are you regular reader. defensive but rather to be open and willing trying to solve?” Instead of reacting, you to receive the questioning from the small need to learn more. group we worked with. As managers, we Don’t Miss It! also tend to be problem solvers. Sometimes According to facilitator Kathryn problem solving is not what is needed. The Harvard Business Deiss, plans are underway for the 2014 Sometimes a dialogue and deeper inquiry Review? Who knew! Leadership Institute. Watch out for more is a better step to the solution. These case The further readings section of the information and the application in early study discussions helped to bring this home. seminar handouts was 100 percent 2014! YALS An idea that resonated with me was leadership focused, not library focused. that the only way to really know another I defi nitely believe that the best way to person’s intentions is to learn what they improve libraries is to read widely outside Reference are from the person. For example, someone of the library profession. Navel gazing 1. American Library Association. asks a question or sends an e-mail that helps no one. That said, the Harvard “ALA Leadership Institute: Leading sends you into a tailspin. The cause might Business Review was not on my radar to the Future” www.ala.org/ really be that you are putting your own prior to this experience as something to transforminglibraries/ala-leadership- interpretations and assumptions onto that read regularly. Now it is. Each month has institute (accessed November 20, 2013).

2014 ALSC National Institute

Expanding Our Worlds, Creating Community

Programming focused on youth services, keynote sessions featuring award-winning authors, and ALSC Connection networking events—all in one place. Join Us Programs on: September 18–20, 2014 H Sensory Storytime H Early Childhood Partnerships Oakland, California H Graphic Novels H Technology in Children's Spaces Oakland Marriott City Center H STEAM Programs H Youth Grant Writing H Children’s Poetry H Everyday Advocacy www.ala.org/alsc/institute

Winter 2014 Young Adult Library Services YALS 5 feature YALSA Perspectives

databases is teaching them how to be DIY Be Flexible with Having a teen help you create content for your teen Web page is DIY. Teaching the 2014 Teen Tech them how to sew is DIY. Social Media Is Very DIY DIY is a wonderful theme for libraries TM with limited digital resource and access to Week Theme tech. We all wish that we had more money for programs and the newest tech and ® are green with envy when we hear about DIY @ your library libraries with iPads for checkouts and 3-D printers. Yet DIY is a theme anyone can implement with things that you have available anywhere. Don’t think about By Carla Avitabile what you cannot do, think about what you can do. Social media is very much DIY— and Christie Gibrich think about what your library doesn’t have yet that you want, and get your teens involved. Do you have a teen blog? Create one with Blogger or WordPress or another een Tech Week (March 9–15) has been around as long as someone had free site, and then have the teens come emphasizes the technologies the thought, “Hey I can make, fi x, craft, or up with graphics and content. Are your T the library has to off er. DIY replace that myself.” The beauty of DIY teens more interested in Tumblr? Create (otherwise known as Do It Yourself) has is that it doesn’t take specialized tools or a teen-centric library using Tumblr to many applications. It can range from the even specialized skills; all you need is a capture their attention, launch it during diffi cult (fi guring out how to replace the willingness to try to fi gure it out yourself Teen Tech Week, and then invite them screen on your laptop) to the easy (making and the enthusiasm to share it with your to create content. Want something less a drawer pull out of a piece of wire). It teens. In our technology-based society, intensive? Celebrate Teen Tech Week can be high tech (learning how to write DIY can be adapted to almost anything by organizing your teens to help add/ computer programs) or low tech (duct teens are already doing in your library. create digital content to the library tape crafts) or anything in between. DIY Teaching a teen how to do research using website, or have teens use their phones to photo document the library. Allowing teens to participate in the library’s social CARLA AVITABILE a librarian for the last three years, currently is media sites also teaches them how to be a teen librarian for the Marin County Free Library System at the responsible purveyors of information. Novato Library, Novato, California. She has been a YALSA member Introducing them to your library’s social for two years and is serving on her first committee with Teen Tech media policy is an easy way to teach them Week. She also regularly reviews teen fiction for the Bay Area about the proper etiquette for posting Young Adult Librarians (BAYA) and is their Book Reviews Editor. online, especially in a professional setting. CHRISTIE GIBRICH is the Senior Librarian/Manager for the Tony Additionally, you can use that time to start Shotwell Life Center Branch Library in Grand Prairie, Texas. She helping them with the fi ne points of digital footprints—helping teens to think what do has served on numerous committees with ALA and YALSA and is they want available for all to see, what they currently chair of the Rainbow Project (GLBT-RT/SRRT). She blogs don’t want available for all to see, and what about anything and everything YA at Teen Librarian Toolbox. Teen people can and will fi nd even if they don’t Tech Week is her most recent YALSA committee. mean them to.

6 YALS Young Adult Library Services Winter 2014 Avitabile and Gibrich

Thinking Outside the along with tables for Minecraft-related makerspace is time to devote to the Box Is Core to DIY crafts and spaces for board games and card program, an idea of what you want to do, Think outside the traditional parameters games for those who are waiting their turn. and a smidge of start-up money to get of Teen Tech Week, and invest time in You don’t have to let on that while you’re things rolling. programs that will reach multiple age letting them chill, you’re helping them Makerspaces can be as simple duct ranges, across the generations, and across fulfi ll a host of the 40 developmental assets tape programs creating bow ties and city departments. Use Teen Tech Week for adolescents. pens and wallets, or letting teens loose to launch a more adventurous ongoing Or upcycle (taking something with pony beads, pipe cleaners, yarn, project where teens collect oral histories and making it even better) your DIY. and stretch cord. They can be as mid- from senior citizens and then upload them Become a collector of things that would level as Lego programs with free builds to an existing or a brand new YouTube be amazing to upcycle, like glass bottles, or specifi cations of ideas on what to channel. Many libraries have programs straws, magazines, or old T-shirts, and create. They can be as tech intensive as a where teens teach seniors to use computers then scour the Internet for ideas. Or let mini-programming lab fi lled with several and the Internet; combine Teen Tech the teens loose with your craft closet and Raspberry Pi computers with WiFi cards Week with a senior Tech Awareness Week, the ideas that you found. Pringles cans, and wireless keyboards ready to help teach and have teens show seniors how to load hardback-weeded books, old stationery, programming basics to a room full of teens e-books onto their e-readers or how to and yarn create excellent bases for or the basics of robotics using building upload photos to their Facebook pages. upcycled crafts. kits similar to robotics competitions. Even Partner with your Parks and Recreation Connect with your technology simple maker projects provide teenagers Department to advertise where seniors are department and get old keyboards and pry with the opportunity to get practical already using your city resources. If your off keys for jewelry and other accessories, hands-on skills using common place tools library has one, this is a perfect time to or take an old CPU apart to see how it such as a screwdriver. Makerspaces, even show off your library e-branch app as well! works. Send a call out to your staff for spaces with commonplace tools, provide You hear all the time about teen private any old technology that they don’t use teens with a learning environment without (and explicit) photos going viral and online anymore or that is broken (remotes, the pressures of a traditional classroom. bullying or sexting. This is not only an printers, cell phones, etc.) and after taking Allowing teens to experiment on their opportunity for teenagers to be reminded of out the bits that could be dangerous, own with basic tools or more complicated important Internet safety but also a chance let the teens take it completely apart to technology gives them the opportunity for them to teach other less savvy users the see the inner workings of the tech that to learn from their mistakes (or their do’s and don’ts of online socializing. they use, and then use the guts of the successes) without having to worry about Think about what you can do that tech in completely new ways. Let them making the grade. would capture your teens’ attention. In a explore their creativity in new ways and lot of areas, Teen Tech Week falls during learn about the natural resources used in spring break. Take the time before Teen creating electronics as well as the proper Low Tech Is Awesome DIY Tech Week to talk to your teens and see disposal of e-waste. Teens are often savvy tech users and many what they want in their library and with adapt to things extremely quickly. However, their library programming. Maybe their at times they don’t know the basics of ideal program is a day just sitting back Makerspaces Are living “off the grid.” Things that we (or our and watching movies. If your library has Extremely DIY grandparents) took for granted as basic an umbrella movie license, pull movies Makerspaces are the newest buzzword knowledge can be completely bizarre to a that they want to watch and set up a in library land. They are spaces and teen today. They can create a Prezi, but Twitter hashtag for the movie fest that materials dedicated to creation and don’t know how to take up a hem or sew a will allow them to comment throughout invention. We’ve seen libraries with 3-D button. They might know how to create a the day on what they’re doing and what printers, giant Hulk statues, and other Vine, but do they know how to change a they think about the movie, à la Mystery wonderful tech labs where creativity and car tire or replace windshield wiper fl uid in Science 3000 or Riff Trax. Maybe they resourcefulness have been paired with a car? They might know how to unlock an want console gaming—let them loose the library to great success. In reality, all iPhone, but can they keep track of fi nances with the Xbox 360 and sets of Minecraft, you need to begin your own pop-up and not just trust the electronic bank

Winter 2014 Young Adult Library Services YALS 7 Be Flexible with the 2014 Teen Tech WeekTM Theme DIY @ your library®

ledger? They might never use cash, but Take the DIY Teen Tech Week theme DIY is very program and can they calculate a tip or to split a check and create a series of workshops and learning friendly! We all know that between friends? They can text type faster videos that show teens how to create a programming can be expensive and than we can read, but do they know how to safe presence on Facebook, Twitter, and varying demographics means that a compose a thank-you note or how to create other social media sites so they won’t end successful program in Toledo is going to a resume? All of these things and more will up on Huff Post or other news sites as bomb in Sacramento. This is why DIY come into play sooner than later, yet your the most misbehaved teens of the week. is so great—it can fit almost any budget teens may not have anyone to show them. Invite college admission offi cers and local and be modified to fit any audience. Take the DIY Teen Tech Week to the employers to discuss how they conduct There is no doubt that you are already extremely basic level and start a Life.hack interviews and review applications, and coming up with cool projects for your series for teens and young adults (or new explain how important the role social own library Teen Tech Week. adults even) showing life skills that they’re media plays in someone’s life, whether For more ideas, take a look at going to need. they know it or not. Note the harm of the Teen Tech Week Ning (http:// Since Teen Tech Week is in March, bullying, and use tools like the Wayback teentechweek.ning.com/). This is a place it’s a perfect time to review Internet Machine to show that things posted on where you will fi nd programming ideas, safety rules for summer and beyond. the Internet never disappear. conversation, and resources. YALS

WHERE DOES A FIRSTBORN GIRL FIT IN A WORLD DOMINATED BY MEN?

When Tiadone was born, her parents had two choices: lleaveeave their daughter outside the community to die in the wilds,ds, or raise her as male and force her to suppress all femininee traits. Now, as the first female living as male in her village, Tiadoneadone must prove her father didn’t make a mistake by letting herer live.live.

Scan to watch the trailer! Or visit http://bit.ly/IplRM6 BlinkYABooks.coms.com

8 YALS Young Adult Library Services Winter 2014 feature YALSA Perspectives

n March YALSA members will spend a week celebrating teens and technology Why Should I during YALSA’s seventh annual Teen Tech Week. While teens’ use of technology continues to rise, especially as today’s teens have always had technology in their lives, Libraries Care teens are not always using the library’s non-print resources. Teen Tech Week gives libraries a chance to showcase the technology they have for teens, and also About Teens and allows teens to learn, or improve, new skills or concepts, such as keeping safe in the virtual world. This article discusses why it Technology? is important to focus on teen technology use and skills, including common misconceptions, the digital divide, how libraries can help, and why it matters at all. By Tiffany Williams

Misconceptions About Teens and Technology know as much as we give them credit for? both credibility and free use to items that It’s easy to see how a few teens interact Or is it possible that they know a few are not either. Just as many of them cannot with technology and try to generalize skills, which seem so complex, that we print an e-mail properly and cannot copy those experiences to the entire population. attribute knowledge of an entire set of and paste an image into another program When a teen helps someone set up a understandings to them? That girl who for printing. In truth, teens know what computer or download an app to their plays World of Warcraft for hours and they use, what they practice, which often smartphone, it’s a simple leap to assume can get rid of computer viruses: she can’t means that they are fl uent in cellphone, they are all extremely knowledgeable adjust the margins in a word-processing social networking, and gaming. This about technology. Similarly, it’s not document, and has no idea how to stop often does not include a skill in databases, diffi cult to think that because teens getting viruses in the fi rst place. Those productivity suites such as Microsoft sometimes choose to share more kids texting all day have no idea how Offi ce, or citing another’s work properly. information than an adult might share to format a resume. They can Google Another misconception is that teens in an online environment, that the teens anything and fi nd it on Wikipedia, but do not need to go through the same do not understand privacy. However, as don’t know the fi rst thing about using learning process with technology that teen advocates, we can do much more the libraries’ vast information stored in other people do, that they just “get” it. for teens by recognizing that anecdotal databases (or even what databases are), Yes, it may seem that technology magically evidence cannot be generalized to the or how to switch to Google Scholar to works for this age group, but this is not whole population. An accurate assessment fi nd credible information. They have the same as teens REALLY knowing how of both technology abilities and gaps in misunderstandings about how information technology works and how to leverage all technological knowledge, on the individual works on the Internet, often attributing of its potential. What is actually happening and community level, is important to designing and implementing experiences TIFFANY WILLIAMS is a graduate of Clarion University of Pennsylvania. that teens will enjoy and learn from. She served on the YALSA STEM Resources Task Force and is a current There are a number of misconceptions about teens and their use member of the Teen Tech Week Committee. With a passion for both of technology. One such misconception teens and technology, she actively searches for ways to demonstrate is that teens know everything there is to the value of both to the larger community. You can follow her on know about technology. Do teens really Twitter @Tichwi.

Winter 2014 Young Adult Library Services YALS 9 Why Should Libraries Care About Teens and Technology?

is that teens are using these devices on There are several components to can learn a lot in one hundred hours, and a daily basis. When confronted with skill development; the lack of any one you can miss a lot in that time, too. Some something new, they look for familiarity of these can lead to a divide. One such may argue that many of those younger with what they already know, which can component is the access to software, and family members will have phones, but that look like knowing without learning. They it is important to remember that access to is not the same as access to a computer. may pick things up faster, not because it a computer is not necessarily analogous Phones and computers, while similar, have is technology, but because they are teens with access to software. For years software diff erent capabilities, and not all of them and because technology has always been a was expensive, both for individuals and directly translate to each other. part of their lives, for as long as they can public institutions. Increasingly, there The same teens that fall behind remember. When something new does are free versions of software available because of the digital divide are often the come along, learning naturally comes easier to download as an alternative. Another groups that libraries are currently reaching when you are younger. component is the availability of resources out to through a variety of programs A fi nal misconception is that every from which teens learn. These resources and services—minorities, lower income teenager has access to a cell phone, could be people who are knowledgeable patrons, fi rst-generation patrons, and generally a smartphone, and at least one about a skill, websites with video tutorials, other marginalized groups. computer. In truth, not all families can or access to technology databases. As aff ord for each member of the household cloud storage and access to programs to have a personal device. Of those that increase, teens are more reliant on Internet Why All of This Matters can aff ord a one device to one person ratio, connections to view and edit documents. There are confl icting reports about the not all of them have high-speed Internet, Without a steady, reliable Internet number of technology jobs that will many relying on cell and data plans, which connection, teens cannot even access the be created in the next decade, but they limits how much access teens have on a fi les they require. all agree there will be an increase in monthly basis. Additionally, teens have How does the digital divide start? The technology jobs in the future. Even those far less access to technology in school than divide can manifest in a number of ways. teens who do not go into a technology fi eld many people realize. Many classrooms are The following off ers an example of how will need to use technology in their daily not equipped for individual students to use one fi ctional teen, Cameron, falls behind. lives. They will need to create and properly technology except when presenting to the It begins as a matter of simple access. format resumes. They will need to class. School libraries have computers, but Cameron’s family has only one computer effi ciently fi nd information, for themselves, students have a limited amount of time, in the home. This means that access is or their bosses. They will likely use e-mail if any, to use those computers before and shared among the whole family, with the to communicate with colleagues, share after school. This diff erence in access is youngest members of the family often documents to work on group projects, often called the digital divide. getting less screen time. Unfortunately, which will not end with graduation. Cameron has three older siblings, who While the technology may be diff erent each need the computer for homework in ten years, it will grow out of current The Digital Divide in the evening. Their homework is more technology, and falling behind now will The digital divide, as you may know, “complicated,” and so their parents allow make it more diffi cult to catch up in the focuses on the diff erence between those the older siblings more computer time future. Even now, it is nearly impossible with access to technology and those than Cameron. Even in these situations to apply for a job without the ability to without. More than just a current of shared access, the impact of the digital upload a resume and fi ll out an application buzzword, the digital divide describes a divide can be seen. Cameron is consistently online. phenomenon that is not only very real, but given a few hours less of computer also very relevant in an increasingly digital time than the older siblings each week. world. There is more to the digital divide Cameron could fall over one hundred How Libraries Help than just access to pieces of technology. hours behind each year. What begins as Libraries already provide computer and Another component of the digital divide is a small diff erence in the amount of access Internet access for their patrons. In some a diff erence in the skills people have. There between teens can soon snowball into libraries, especially smaller libraries, is a divide between those with digital skills larger diff erences in competency. Over the there are few, if any, computers that are and those without. course of several years, this adds up. You specifi cally designated for teens, despite

10 YALS Young Adult Library Services Winter 2014 Williams

the fact in many of these same buildings children and adults each have their own What Makes Great Tech Resources for Teens? set of computers. Which computers teens use depends often on whether the library Technology changes at a pace that the print publishing world cannot always keep up with. In order to keep up with these changes, librarians should cultivate a list of digital resources groups young adult services with children’s for teens. It is important to keep these resources up to date. Some tips for choosing or adult services. In other libraries, teens resources: are not allowed to check out technology such as laptops, e-readers, cameras, and Teens, and others, sometimes have a hard time paying attention for long periods of · time. Look for resources that have a variety of deliveries. Short videos, concise text, other peripherals, generally because of and plenty of chances to experiment with what they are learning. the high price of such items and concerns Every teen is different and learns in a different manner. Similar to the last tip, look for about damage and theft. The fi rst step that · a variety of resources, not just one resource with a variety of instruction methods. libraries must take is fi ghting to provide Some things to look for: text-heavy resources, video resources, audio resources, and equal access to technology for teens. This resources to practice new skills. Teens are very visual. Look for resources that have an appealing design. Vibrant or may mean changing policies to allow them · contrasting colors, clean and simple, not too cluttered. For digital resources, the de- to check out technology, or making sure sign is the cover that can draw teens in or send them running. they have as much access to computers as · Teens are not children. Overly simplified text or graphics may appear condescending any other age group. Space considerations to some teens. Make sure the resources are at their level, and don’t be afraid to find are often an issue when it comes to resources that will challenge them. providing computers, but a set of laptops is easy to store and gives teens the freedom to move about or congregate around the out to parents. Another way to gather the these resources is that they are generally technology without interfering with other information within the library is to keep free; you just have to do the work of computer users. a record of what questions the teens ask curating the content in a way that will Access to technology is only the fi rst when they are using technology. appeal to teens. You may also fi nd that step in bridging the digital divide. The your library subscribes to one or more second step is to fi nd ways for teens to databases that provide instruction in develop their technology skills. This can be Programming and Resources computer programs that you can highlight done in two ways, through programming Not all teens are going to come to for the teens. and through resources. Before taking programs. No matter how creative the When it comes to programming, it either of those steps librarians need to name, fun the activities, or interactive is easy to say that the reason there are no assess the skills their teens are lacking, the program is, there will always be teens computer skill programs off ered to teens which can be diff erent depending on who for whatever reason are unable to is because they do not attend Microsoft the community. A good place to start participate. For these teens, it is important Offi ce workshops or setting up e-mail is by talking to parents, teachers, other to have a variety of resources that they can classes. Teens are not passionate about librarians, and the teens themselves. Find use to develop technology skills. Teens either of these topics, so it is unlikely that out what skills the schools expect them to are likely to be drawn to diff erent types they will pursue them on their own time. have, what questions are the teens asking of resources than adults. Try to fi nd ones Instead, fi nd out what your teens are while working on computers, and what that are graphic and fun, but do not sound interested in and passionate about. Using skills they are likely to need in college, in like they were written for children. Look a survey, as mentioned before, is one way employment after high school for future for resources that go beyond computers to fi nd out what your teens are excited jobs, and in life in general. One way to to look at tablets, phones, and cameras, about. However, expressed interest on gather this information is through a as well as diff erent types of programs that a survey does not always translate into survey. Create one for students and one these devices use. Books are only a start, attendance at a program. Take your survey for teachers. Talk to the local schools and when it comes to technology, can be results a step further and bring them to to see if they can pass the surveys out an ineffi cient use of funds as technology your teen advisory board. If you don’t have during homeroom, or another class that changes so rapidly. You will also want to one established, Teen Tech Week is a all students take. You may be able to make fi nd websites, videos, podcasts, and other great reason to start one! Giving teens the use of the school’s e-mail list to send a link web-based resources. An advantage to chance to plan and implement the program

Winter 2014 Young Adult Library Services YALS 11 Why Should Libraries Care About Teens and Technology?

situation, it will go better if the teens are Designing a Good Survey engaged and interested in the material. Finding a topic or method of teaching The key to designing a good survey is using the 5 W’s (and an H). that is interesting to the teens can be Who: Who is your survey targeted at? Keep in mind your target respondents’ reading level diffi cult but worthwhile if the teens and attention span. Young kids will do better with shorter words and fewer questions. Try remember more from the lesson after to keep library jargon out (unless you are surveying other librarians). Also, think about the it is completed. Show them how to use kind of information that the age group is likely to disclose. Microsoft Publisher to format a comic What: What do you want to find out? Imagine the survey is over. You are looking through book. Let them create resumes for their the results and beginning to analyze them. What does the data tell you? Be as specific as favorite fi ctional or historical characters in possible. Do you want to know how respondents feel about individual library programs? Microsoft Word or one of its equivalents. Do you want to know which programs they like best, in comparison to others? Do you want new ideas for programs? When teaching classes about a program that teens may not fi nd interesting, it Where: Where will the survey be taken? Will it be handed to patrons of the library when may help to see if you can teach the they check out materials, posted on the library’s website, or handed out to teens in class in conjunction with a school, either homeroom? Consider how each location will affect the amount of time respondents are willing to spend on the survey. It is better to get quality answers to a couple questions than holding the class at the school or fi nding get results that mean little to many questions. if there are teachers who will off er extra credit for attending. Also, contact local When: What is your timeframe for survey completion? Will you post it on the website for a homeschooling groups to let them know month or ask teachers to have students complete it within a week? what classes are being off ered, as some Why: What do you plan to do with the survey results? Why are you asking for these parents may want their children to learn answers? Every question should have a valid reason to exist. If there is a question on the skills that they themselves do not possess. survey that cannot be justified, remove it. If you may need it at a later date, save it for a later survey.

How: This is often the most difficult part, deciding which question type and phrasing Larger Benefits of will elicit the answers you are looking for. This is also where all the other planning really Using Technology pays off. Looking at the examples from the “What” section, you can see how different The end result of engaging programing question phrasing will provide different responses. If you want to know about the feelings toward individual programs, a good question would ask for a rating about each program for teens is what the teens will be able to separately, on some standard scale (0 to 7; very unsatisfied to satisfied). To compare give back to society as a whole and to the programs, which will not tell how someone feels about a program, but how they feel about library. Teens who understand technology a program in comparison to another, list all the programs and have the respondent rank will have a better chance at excelling in them. If you want new ideas, the best option is to ask for an open-ended response, leaving both school and life. While we do not several lines for respondents to fill in their own answer in their own words. know what will come next in terms of technology, we can be certain that there will be a next thing. If teens understand not only gives them a sense of ownership program about game design will teach the the technology available today, they will be over the event, but also allows them to smaller skills of programming logic, story better prepared to learn and successfully generate ideas that resonate with their design, and searching for help online. A use the technology of tomorrow. interests and takes a lot of the guesswork program about game design is likely to When the teens at your library fully out of the process for librarians. draw teens in. However, if the program understand the technology they are using, Whether it is game playing, game were advertised as “Learn the logic behind they can teach other patrons who may design, making music, editing photos and computer programs, story design, and how also be on the wrong side of the digital videos, writing, or any other interest, there to search for help online,” there would divide. This could be seniors and other is a need for computers and software. probably be less interest from your teen adults who need more help than library Instead of focusing on the how, show patrons. staff can provide, other teens who are teens the why. Focus on the end result, There may be instances when it is struggling to grasp technology, or younger such as a completed video, instead of the appropriate to off er more specifi c, basic patrons who are just being introduced to individual skills needed. For example, a classes. However, as with any learning technology. YALS

12 YALS Young Adult Library Services Winter 2014 feature Best Practices

ike all librarians, I believe that everyone deserves a place in the Everyone Deserves Llibrary. It’s one of the things I love most about this profession: our commitment to treat all of our users equally and with respect. That said, I a Place in the Library sometimes feel defensive about the path I’ve taken in my career. I decided about halfway through my MLS coursework By Sarah Ludwig that I wanted to be a young adult librarian. And, more specifi cally, I wanted to work with “at-risk” teens . . . whatever that myopic catch-all phrase means. I was asked to interview at a few large in a public school, or in an economically anyone looking out for them, since they urban library systems, where I’d sent my challenged community. (My own personal seem to have everything under control. resume right around graduation. But an background is another story for another Often, we have a harder time connecting opportunity came up close to home, and I day.) This article is only about my own with these teens. They are usually very took it, because it was a pretty amazing job experiences, and about my belief that all good at presenting themselves to others, for a 27 year old right out of grad school. teens, no matter what their socioeconomic especially adults. In addition, our own I became the director of a small boarding or social status is, deserve high-quality adolescent insecurities can sometimes school library, and since then, my jobs library services, trusted adults in their lives, come out when we work with teens; we’re have all been similar: teen librarian and a safe space in their community. reminded of how hard it was to talk to at a well-funded library in a wealthy Is it easier to work in a privileged the soccer captain when we were 15. I am community; librarian and academic community because of the users? I don’t sometimes intimidated by the popular technologist at a private day school; and know for sure. As I said before, I’ve never kids, as embarrassing as that is to admit as currently, library administrator at a girls’ experienced anything else, so I don’t a 35 year old. boarding school. feel comfortable drawing comparisons. Maybe this is the dirty secret of teen When I was a public librarian, I began Instead, I’d like to focus on why it’s and school librarianship: when you work to struggle with my professional identity important for us to meet the needs of with teens, sometimes you feel like a and purpose. In a community where it those who appear not to have any. And, teen. After my stint in public libraries, I appeared (emphasis on appeared) that if you have found yourself in a similar returned to a school library and in my fi rst every kid had private tutors, an iPhone, environment and are struggling with how year, when all the students were nice to their own car, and a huge house, I couldn’t to connect with your users, I have some me, I actually thought they were playing a quite fi gure out how to enrich my patrons’ ideas for you. trick on me. When I fi nally trusted them, lives. I was trying too hard to impress them When we picture ourselves working I discovered that they were loving, and with fancy programs and not trying hard with teens in a library, we often forget kind, and funny. It was those students who enough to be a good librarian. I had a hard about those who don’t appear as needy: made me realize I’d been wrong in how I’d time talking with the teens, even the ones the popular kids, the athletes, the class judged, and immature and selfi sh in how who served on my advisory board. Their presidents. Those teens, we might think, I’d incorrectly viewed myself through their manners were amazing, they were much have enough people providing them eyes. I’d started to stereotype and write better at event planning than I was, and with resources, support, and learning kids off before I even got to know them. certainly they were better dressed. opportunities. Or maybe they don’t need It’s easy to paint all teens with the same Before I go any further, I need to be clear about something: this article is not intended to directly compare working SARAH LUDWIG is the Dean of Digital and Library Services at The Ethel in private schools and public schools, or Walker School in Simsbury, Connecticut. Her current passions include communities with diff erent socioeconomic weaving technology into reading programs, gaming in the classroom, demographics. After all, I’ve never worked and “flipped” school libraries.

Winter 2014 Young Adult Library Services YALS 13 Everyone Deserves a Place in the Library

brush, especially when you only see them class. It all came to a head, and this girl school and who were taking an extra year a few hours out of the day. We all make cried and cried in my dinky little offi ce, at a private school to get their grades judgments based on how people dress, talk, and I just sat there stunned, trying to up, bulk up their stats on the fi eld or and act. But, of course, it’s the stuff we think of the right thing to say before my the court, and increase their chances can’t see that matters. instincts kicked in. This girl—let’s call her of getting into a good college. Many In all of the libraries I’ve been a part Katie—was, by all appearances, perfect. of them had never written a research of, I’ve worked with teens from all ends She always had things under control. paper before, or seen MLA, or heard of of the socioeconomic strata. My students Her smile would light up a room, and she a works cited page. They didn’t know and patrons have come from a wide fl ashed that smile often. Sometimes, when the diff erence between quoting and range of backgrounds: religious, ethnic, talking to her, it was easy to forget that paraphrasing. We started with the basics: racial, economic, you name it. The more she was only 17. But Katie was a kid like topic sentences. Exploring subjects. you get to know them, the more this any other, and she couldn’t handle it all. Writing a thesis statement. Months after becomes clear. They all share something Hyper-successful kids (and the adults in graduating—you know where this story in common: they attend a great school, or their lives) hold themselves to unrealistic is going—one of my students wrote to live in a great community. But that doesn’t standards. They’re afraid to falter or show me and thanked me for what I’d taught mean they’re all coming from the same uncertainty or weakness. And because of him. He’d gone to Fairfi eld University place. this, they struggle to manage their stress. and actually knew what to do when he’d Financial, social, and academic status Katie couldn’t keep it all in, and neither been assigned his fi rst research paper. doesn’t insulate teens from the pressures could the soccer captain whose dad was So how do we connect with teens of life. In my years of experience as a getting remarried. Or the snarky skater who don’t seem to need connections, or librarian, I’ve encountered bullying, kid whose processing delays made it who we don’t know how to talk to? Can body issues, drug and alcohol abuse, impossible for him to understand what we get away with only providing services interrelationship abuse, depression, he was reading. Or the girl who came to to the teens we’re most comfortable with? anxiety, self-harm, a whole host of my school because she’d been hanging out Of course not—any librarian would shoot GLBTQ issues, teen pregnancy, with gang members and drug dealers at you a dirty look if you even suggested divorce—you name it. The closer you her last one. such a thing. But that doesn’t mean we get to teens, the more you hear and What do librarians do for our won’t ever be outside of our comfort see. In my prior two school jobs, I was users? We help them understand the zone with privileged teens—and here’s often shocked by what my students world, and if they’re privileged, we help some advice for what to do if you are. would disclose to me. (I’ve only been at them understand the world outside of Overserved teens require a specifi c set of my current job for a few months, and that bubble. We teach them how to use skills. They can be demanding, stressed it usually takes a lot longer to form a information responsibly and ethically. out, and hypersocial. If you are unused to bond with students than that.) But also, We give them the tools to seek out working with them, it’s natural to want I’m honored that they trusted me, and their own questions and answers. The to shut down in their presence. Privileged grateful for the chance to get them help. overachievers are sometimes the worst teens are used to getting what they want, One year, a girl who was not my off enders when it comes to lazy research and this can sometimes lead to a diffi cult advisee came into my offi ce and asked to methods and cut-and-paste writing. relationship between patron and librarian, shut the door. She was one of the most, if They want to know what they need to which is why it’s important to not just not the most, popular girls in the junior do to pass the class, or get an A. They take the time to know and understand class. Pretty, well-dressed, shiny hair, a need a formula, and that formula rarely your teens, but also to make sure you’re full load of APs, three-varsity athlete, involves open-ended problem solving. maintaining your sense of authority and you name it. And she was crying. Why? Librarians give teens the skills they need professionalism. Because her best friend was ignoring to troubleshoot, to try again, to fi gure Put your own insecurities aside, her. She was running a fundraiser and out where to start. In my fi rst library job, if you have them (and lucky you if you everyone was criticizing the way she was at a highly athletic school, I taught 11 don’t). Teens are people who are forcing going about it. She’d lost the election for post-grad boys—all football or basketball themselves into the world, projecting class president. And she couldn’t seem players—in a research seminar. These their personalities and their interests and to get an A on anything in her English were kids who had done poorly in public their opinions without discrimination or

14 YALS Young Adult Library Services Winter 2014 Ludwig

subtlety. This can often manifest itself in have done a good job setting boundaries, what some people call “attitude.” It isn’t; then you’ve created an environment where it’s testing the waters, pushing against teens can feel safe talking to you, and Identity boundaries, and, sometimes, expressing you can feel safe engaging in that kind of stress, exhaustion, confusion, sadness, conversation, too. Matters or frustration. You are an adult who has Be prepared to modify your services a responsibility to try to look beyond based on your audience. If you spent Especially when you’re a teen. these outward behaviors. This means much of library school or your previous treating teens with respect, but also job planning events and activities treating yourself with respect. You have that appeal to a certain type of teen the authority to set behavioral boundaries or student, you may have to change and uphold standards. Going along with gears. This can be tricky if you’re now “An engaging this, it’s important—and this sounds a trying to plan events that you yourself portrait of little pat—to be yourself. When working wouldn’t attend. Ask for help from siblings caught with outgoing and confi dent teens, there’s trusted patrons, and ask for advice from in the blame sometimes a temptation to try to impress your population as a whole. Set up game.” them, or to resent them for their privilege. focus groups, send out polls, connect —Kirkus You will only connect with them by with teachers or other adults in your putting aside those resentements and being community, and see what other agencies genuine. Trying too hard to be someone are doing for teens. If all of your students 9781459802865 you’re not is a surefi re way to get teens to are obsessed with Pretty Little Liars but distrust you. you’re more of a Downton Abbey fan, you Give teens time, and give yourself may have to bite the bullet and plan a “Breathless, time. Listen to the words behind their TV marathon and discussion group— fast-paced words. A guff awing jock may just be and you might need to visit the PLL fun.” trying to get a rise out of you, but I bet if Wikipedia page to catch up! —Kirkus you sit down with him one-on-one and Get to know teens as individuals, not talk, you’ll fi nd out something important members of a clique. Coming down hard about him. I got wonderful advice from on teens before you know them will get a fellow teacher when I brought up the you nowhere, so be ready when someone 9781459804340 topic of responding to rude or aloof rolls her eyes at you in front of her friends. teens. My colleague, who had worked You’re either going to let it go (because in retail, reminded me of something you’re the adult, right), or call her out I’d learned while working at the public and be prepared for the consequences. “Laugh- library. Always assume positive intent. I try to choose the latter, as gently and out-loud If a teen is rude, bring it up gently. “Is calmly as I can. Listen, and be patient, and funny.” everything OK? Is this helpful? You be kind. Just like you would be with any —VOYA seem a little frustrated.” This gives your other library user. If you work in a well-off patron a chance to explain what’s going community or school and the teens are on. They may not intend to come across using the library, you’re on the path to 9781459802971 as frustrated, or they may be having a success. The teens are there—they fi nd bad day for reasons that have nothing to value in the library. Be grateful for that, do with you. With this age group, every because if you take the time to see teens for Ebooks also available interaction is a chance to model empathy who they really are, you will love each and and positive communication. And if you every one of them. YALS

Winter 2014 Young Adult Library Services YALS 15 feature Best Practices

What does the Mobile LAM look The Mobile LAM like? Picture an RV bus, customized to create a fl exible, connected learning environment, fully equipped to facilitate engagement, using a combination of (Library, Archive & technology tools, as well as print and digital materials and physical objects. Long tables on either side would hold several laptops for accessing digital collections, Museum): for general research, and to support a wide variety of collaborative projects. Laptops and tablets seem ideal for this space since they can easily be tucked away and do New Space for Engagement not take up much room, allowing visitors plenty of space for group work and for interaction with the available resources. A By Angela Rovatti-Leonard SmartBoard visible to all on board would allow visitors the ability to view, create, or give presentations. Cabinets above long tables on either side of the RV would n response to technological advances, objects; access to digital collections) from safely house and display print materials budgetary issues, and changes in the libraries, archives, and museums and then and physical objects borrowed from Ineeds of researchers and patrons, two bring them to schools, other educational LAMs. These items would not necessarily ideas have become part of discussions institutions, and places in communities be permanently housed on the RV but in LIS literature: collaboration among where teens spend time, in an eff ort to could be changed according to the libraries, archives, and museums (LAMs) engage teens with the cultural record, their particular needs of the visitors at any and user-centered services. This article communities, and to support connected given time. focuses on the prospect of combining learning. This type of collaboration is The defi nition of library (or archive, LAMs and user-centered services, along possible in a variety of ways: collaboration or museum) is changing. Everything from with collaboration, technology, and user- among local and national libraries, archives the services that are provided to whether orientation models to create something and museums; librarians and teachers; it lives solely in a bricks-and-mortar new—the Mobile LAM. teens and donors (those donating materials building, includes an active interactive to repositories); libraries and community digital environment, and/or is mobile businesses, and more. A LIS professional and travels to where the community What’s a Mobile LAM? on board the Mobile LAM RV would be most needs the services provided is under The Mobile LAM would pull together responsible for coordinating all aspects of review. Collaboration between LAMs resources (written records and material managing the Mobile LAM. can serve as a vehicle through which LIS professionals can ride the waves of change while remaining relevant and continuing ANGELA ROVATTI-LEONARD, a graduate of Simmons College to provide quality services to patrons GSLIS-West Campus in South Hadley, Massachusetts, eagerly of all ages. Lisa McGiven and Lianne seeks opportunities to advocate for and better serve children and McTavish describe the challenges and teens. Rovatti-Leonard recently assisted the Sunderland Public opportunities change presents, highlighting interdisciplinary collaboration: Library in Massachusetts with an LSTA Teens and Tweens Grant. She previously planned programs for all ages at the Dickinson As digitization projects move Memorial Library in Northfield, Massachusetts. She can be forward, as government funding reached at [email protected]. becomes increasingly competitive,

16 YALS Young Adult Library Services Winter 2014 Rovatti-Leonard

and as individual citizens harness information provided offers another painting by the artist from a museum in the power of Web 2.0 technologies layer of granularity to the collection for Connecticut (where the artist originally to engage with cultural organizations the next researcher. lived) for the teens to view. The teens in new ways, librarians, archivists, Extending this kind of user could ask the artist their questions and and museologists—whatever they participation, the Mobile LAM could get advice and ideas from the artist in choose to label themselves—must bring the library, archives, and museum real time. Perhaps teens were asked to work together toward a common to students. Similar to class visits to an study various artists as part of a school curriculum and common baseline of archive, in which students use primary assignment and their interest was sparked, expert knowledge to gather, manage, sources to work on school projects, extending to a project at their community and make accessible the vast array of the Mobile LAM would visit schools center. In this example, teens, artist, and materials in the coming centuries.1 or meet students at local historical artwork converge in a way that would most societies and sites, providing a hands-on, likely not be possible in a regular school or Collaboration among LAMs is not a multidisciplinary learning experience. library setting. new concept. Given and McTavish provide In addition to meeting students where Another aspect of connected learning a specifi c and early example of the blending they are, the Mobile LAM could also meet that could be supported on the Mobile of books and objects in the Natural donors, those donating materials to various LAM is the way in which self-directed History Society of Montreal created collections, especially those who are either learning can be more meaningful. It is in 1827. An extension of the Society, a unable to get to the various institutions much easier for someone to truly engage museum and library, included written or do not have access to the Internet. In in a project that is led by one’s own records and material objects that were keeping with the collaborative nature and interests or passions rather than a project mutually dependent, one illustrating the connected learning environment of the that is imposed. If the Mobile LAM was other. Scholars would use both scientifi c Mobile LAM, the opportunity for bringing strategically placed in a location where books and preserved specimens to expand both students and donors together teens spend time, such as malls, food their understanding of the natural world.2 presents itself. For example, as part of a places, etc., there could be great potential In this way, the Mobile LAM off ers an school project, right on the vehicle high for them to utilize the tech tools and the environment for expanded understanding, school students could assist donors in space to explore their interests. off ering students, researchers, and donors scanning their donated documents into Engagement is key to the success fresh kinds of access to various collections databases. of any service or program. A teacher or of written records and material objects, The Mobile LAM would provide librarian could have the most wonderful employing a combination of traditional and support for connected learning, lesson or program planned for teens, yet, innovative methods. highlighting the idea that learning happens if the teens aren’t truly interested, it can be everywhere. In this way, the vehicle could nearly impossible to get them to engage. So off er support for teens outside of school as what engages teens? Of course the answer How Technology Fits In well. The space on the RV, with its tech can be as diverse as the teens themselves. The implementation of Web 2.0 tools and an LIS professional, could also Middle school teacher Heather Wolpert- technologies in libraries, archives, and off er an environment that allows teens Gawron polled students with this very museums, encourages user participation to make connections between various question. From the responses of about and a way for students, researchers, and aspects of their lives: home, school, and 200 students, she found that there were donors to interact with the collections peers. Groups in one location could meet three main themes that reoccurred: in a new way.3 For example, people with educators or experts located in “Working with their peers; Working with can visit an archives website and add another part of the country (or another technology; Connecting the real world to comments or crucial information part of the world). For example, a group the work we do/project-based learning.”4 about collections, such as identifying of teens working on designing a mural for All three of these elements could be a particular person in a digitized their community center in Connecticut explored on the Mobile LAM. photograph. This kind of interaction could hear from the artist they’ve been The following example illustrates between users and collections enriches researching, who lives in California, made another possibility for engagement. A both the users’ experience as well as possible by a Google Hangout, on the LIS professional would be involved as a enriching the collection itself. The Mobile LAM. The librarian borrowed a facilitator or guide rather than as someone

Winter 2014 Young Adult Library Services YALS 17 The Mobile LAM (Library, Archive & Museum)

who dictates specifi cally what kinds of Institutions (IFLA) report, the authors appreciate the convenience of being able things the teens would do. After talking note that their study illustrates how LAMs to drop children (and potentially teens?) to the teens, to get an idea of some of “by collaborating […] can: support lifelong off at the outpost while they shop.8 Lastly, the things they are interested in, the LIS learning and community development, the SparkTruck, the vision of a group professional could set up a makerspace become partners in a variety of cultural of Stanford students, combined making, (with materials ranging from craft and economic initiatives, enable universal education, and technology and took to supplies, to audio/visual equipment, to access to information, preserve heritage the road in an eff ort to facilitate hands-on a 3-D printer). Teens could collaborate, materials, reach new customers and learning for students all over the United each bringing his or her own strengths improve core services.”5 States.9 Each of these examples showcases to the makerspace, learning from one innovative ways of creating user-centered another. Perhaps nearby adults may be learning environments. curious about what’s going on and join Where Are the Models? The Mobile LAM, an extension of the makerspace, adding their experience A description of some of the similar the previously mentioned models, would and knowledge. Similarly, the adults may models that exemplify collaboration include: also learn something new from the teens. among LAMs follows. The Warwickshire Whether collaborating or simply working Mobile Library Service teamed with the · an on-site educator (from a “home- side-by-side, everyone involved in the British Museum’s Portable Antiquities base” institution: library, archive and/ makerspace could learn and grow. Scheme in 2007 to present museum or museum) The Mobile LAM meets at the artifacts to mobile library customers · wireless access intersection of preservation and (similar to the bookmobile in the · laptops for browsing the collections access—preservation of the collections, United States) in order to promote local · cabinets and display cases to secure written records, and material objects, archaeology and to introduce customers print and material objects and preservation of the professions of to local museums and archives services.7 · space for researchers, students, and librarians, archivists, and museologists, In 2009, Maria Mortati created the donors to access the collections, albeit through a collaborative lens. San Francisco Mobile Museum, which physical, print and digital, and to In an article for the Harvard Gazette, included onsite visitor participation and interact, create, and learn from one Hattie Stroud, a master’s of architecture off ered a fresh way to engage with the another (i.e., makerspace) student working on a project at the public.6 The Cleveland Public Library · information pamphlets regarding Harvard Library Innovation Lab notes, installed a portable reading room services off ered by local information- “Now that [the idea of the library] has downtown in 2012, called a “Book Box,” based institutions been so radically destabilized by the that off ers a small seating area, books · low entrance with two small steps Internet, what libraries have to offer for circulation, free wireless access, · ramp at the rear for wheelchair users is prime space for engagement. The and laptops for Internet browsing. · temperature control library will best serve its community— Food-related books with subjects academic, social or otherwise—by such as cooking and urban agriculture providing unique experiences.”4 were chosen for the reading room to Conclusion Although here Stroud speaks only to complement the nearby one-hundred- As the defi nition of what a library libraries, this could be extended to year-old food emporium, The West (or archive, or museum) is shifts, LIS archives and museums as well. Side Market.7 More recently (2013) the professionals can respond by resisting The Mobile LAM could also provide Colorado Library opened an outpost in and refusing to embrace change or by that space for community engagement a local Kmart. The outpost allows the recognizing the shift as a catalyst for with cultural materials and that unique main library to have a presence in the collaboration of proportions previously experience that off ers a way for library, community without incurring the expense unknown. Although the idea of archives, and museum professionals to of opening another branch. Visitors can collaboration among LAMs is not new, remain relevant—through a redefi ning use the 11 computers available, sign-up the notion of combining print and of their roles—in a rapidly changing for a library card, request items through material objects with technology and environment. In the 2008 International the online catalog, and have those items Federation of Library Associations and delivered to the outpost. Some parents (continued on page 21)

18 YALS Young Adult Library Services Winter 2014 It’s easy to see that Evie doesn’t fi t in on the Surface…

Book Two of The Elysium Chronicles

Six weeks after arriving on the Surface, Evelyn Winters is no closer to unlocking her memories than when she fi rst came. In a strange new society, her differences make her feel more and more alone, and she can’t help but yearn for that place she doesn’t remember: the isolated city hidden in the depths of the ocean.

Elysium. Home.

But then her ever-elusive memories begin colliding with her new reality: people and images from her past appear in the most unlikely places, haunting her, provoking her… and making her seem not only strange—but dangerous.

The Elysium Chronicles, J. A. Souders’ riveting SF series for teens continues in Revelations.

Also Available

“ [A] dark and exciting YA novel… A solid recommendation for fans of dystopian fi ction.” —School Library Journal on Renegade

“ Grim, vicious, riveting. Renegade is a haunting, unforgettable debut.” —Ann Aguirre, national bestselling author of Enclave Renegade Book One of The Elysium Chronicles Revelations 
t
5SBEF
1BQFSCBDL Book Two of The Elysium Chronicles 
t
)BSEDPWFS

FOLLOW TOR BOOKS! | tor-forge.com | GET FREE EXCERPTS when you sign up for the free Tor/Forge monthly newsletter GET UPDATES about your favorite Tor and Forge authors when you sign up for Author Updates feature Best Practices

clear break from my personal past to walk An Interview with into an imagined realm. It helped me to make that transition. Having read fantasy from childhood, from a middle grade work titled The Author Lorie Ann Enormous Egg by Oliver Butterworth to Anne McAff ery’s Harper Hall Trilogy, I always wanted my own egg to hatch and bond with. Firstborn gave me that Grover experience. Also, while I homeschooled my daughters, historical material often surfaced which sparked fantasy ideas such as the Spartan military training of children, the people of Mesa Verde, orie Ann Grover is an author of YA Q: The theme of family is important in or the various periods of religious novels, sometimes told in verse, and your novels. Why do you choose to write persecution. I knew those stories could Lboard books. Her upcoming release, about family? underlie and add substance to my Firstborn, is her fi rst YA fantasy. In order imagination. to avoid gendercide, the main character A: Oh, it is! My fi rst three novels sprang struggles with her life as a declared male for from my own life experiences: my Q: Can you tell us about your blog, the benefi t of society under oppressive rulers. grandmother’s breast cancer, the end of readergirlz (rgz), and why you decided my ballet career, and my father leaving our to co-found it? Q: What do you think the appeal of family the same time the boy in front of novels in verse is to teens? me was kidnapped. All of those instances A: In 2006, after touring and visiting played out within the context of my family. inner city schools for the release of A: Verse is able to carry a lot of emotion Firstborn is my departure from my Nothing but the Truth (and a few white in a compressed space. The empty white personal life. When I read 37 million girls lies) Justina Chen had a hope for teens areas serve as breathers for the reader. are missing due to China’s One Child who never had the opportunity to What an asset for coming-of-age works Policy, just recently amended, I knew engage with an author. She approached which often strive to convey such intensity I had to speak for those girls. My voice local YA authors Janet Lee Carey, to teens who are eager to read of it. would carry through one girl and her Dia Calhoun, and me to utilize brand I originally wrote Firstborn in verse. family. Isn’t it all about family? The one new social media platforms to do However, it didn’t work for the story because you come from and the one you make by just that. Before we knew it, we had the fantasy required so much more setting your own choice? readers speaking to authors around the detail which the white spaces didn’t allow. I so appreciate the work of All Girls world, impacting each other daily. It’s Allowed—www.allgirlsallowed.com—and wonderful how today that is the norm, Q: Is your process for writing verse the Global Gendercide Advocacy and with everyone chatting and exchanging diff erent than writing prose? Awareness Project—www.ggaap.com—as ideas through various sites. they make strides against gendercide. The early rgz platform positioned A: No, it’s really the same. I “see” the entire the 33 rgz volunteers as middlemen to movie in my head before I begin to write. My Q: Your fi rst three novels deal with connect other nonprofi t organizations agent, Elizabeth Harding, will often say after realistic problems. What made you with publishers. It was a joy to partner fi rst drafts, “Tell me more of what you see.” decide to write Firstborn, your next book with YALSA and drop over 30,000 books And I have to build layer upon layer. As if to be published, as a fantasy? into the hands of underserved hospitalized I am adding clay upon an armature. Versus teens and young adults on tribal lands. others who write like they are chiseling away A: Fantasy became a vehicle for me to step Today we continue to support Teen at a marble block to discover their piece. away from my own experiences. It was a Literature Day by leaving YA books in

20 YALS Young Adult Library Services Winter 2014 public places as a part of Operation Teen Q: Which YA authors do you enjoy have featured at our site: Beth Kephart, Book Drop. The rgz blog acts as our reading? Deb Caletti, Nikki Grimes, Libba Bray, depot for news and recommendations, and Sara Zarr. And the men! John Green, thanks to YA authors Melissa Walker and A: Of course all the rgz volunteers’ works Markus Zusak, M.T. Anderson, and Micol Ostow. Who knows what we all such as Martha Brockenbrough, Holly Matthew Quick. I’ll stop there as I could might do together tomorrow? Cupala, and Mitali Perkins. And those we go on and on…

The Mobile LAM (Library, Archive & Museum) (continued from page 18) user-centered services offers a fresh and Museums in the Digital Age, ” Library Libraries, Archives and Museums: Trends exciting interdisciplinary perspective to Quarterly 80, no. 1 (2010): 7–32. in Collaboration and Cooperation.” www. the changing vision of LIS professions. 2. Given and McTAvish, 2010. ifl a.org/fi les/assets/hq/publications/ The Mobile LAM, as an extension of 3. Heather Wolpert-Gawron, “Kids professional-report/108.pdf (accessed libraries, archives, and museums, could Speak Out on Student Engagement,” October 26, 2012). serve as a new space for engagement. Edutopia, 2012, www.edutopia.org/ 6. Maria Mortati, “Large Lessons from a In the spirit of the creators of the blog/student-engagement-stories- Small Project: The San Francisco Mobile SparkTruck, as a recent library school heather-wolpert-gawron (accessed Museum,” Exhibitionist Spring (2012): graduate, I’d like to begin my career in October 1, 2013). 32–37. youth services—embracing current and 4. Hattie Stroud, “Students, Faculty 7. Laura B. Weiss, et al., “Cleveland Adds emerging technologies—by “driving Design Space Envisioning the Library Portable Reading Room,” Library Journal the change,” using innovative ways of the Future,” Harvard Gazette, 137, no. 14 (2012): 12. to best serve the young people of our 2012, http://news.harvard.edu/ 8. Jeff Wells, “Colorado Library Opens communities. YALS gazette/story/newsplus/students- Outpost Inside Kmart,” Library faculty-design-space-envisioning- Journal (2013), http://lj.libraryjournal. the-library-of-the-future/ (accessed com/2013/07/library-services/colorado- References November 15, 2012). library-opens-outpost-inside-kmart/ 1. Lisa M. Given and Lianne McTavish, 5. International Federation of Library (accessed September 30, 2013). “What’s Old Is New Again: The Associations and Institutions IFLA 9. SparkTruck, http://sparktruck.org/ Reconvergence of Libraries, Archives, and Professional Reports, No. 108, “Public (accessed September 30, 2013).

Winter 2014 Young Adult Library Services YALS 21 feature Hot Spot: Teens, Tech, & Learning

Smithsonian, and DreamYard (in the New A Learning Lab York City borough of the Bronx) were doing to connect teens with technology and art. These labs were providing teens with access to recording studios, art Makes It in St. Paul supplies, makerspaces, video equipment, sewing machines, and more. They provided a safe, teens-only space where By Jennifer Larson they can feel comfortable hanging out, learning, and creating. They provide adult mentors who teach the skills teens want to learn. As a youth services librarian, the more I learned about these learning labs group of about 40 people squint their institutions. As fi nancing for the labs the more excited I became to implement at a wall full of sticky notes comes to a close, the purpose of the retreat our own version in Saint Paul. Ascribbled on with a Sharpie is to establish a community of practice and marker, occasionally leaning in to read ensure that the network stays intact and one closer, occasionally pulling one off organized for ongoing communication and HOMAGO? the wall and rearranging it into another support. It’s a daunting task, establishing Most of the YOUMedia Network clump of notes. The conference room is a network, but if anyone is up to the task of learning labs operate within the uncharacteristically quiet as this diverse it’s this diverse group of innovative and HOMAGO guidelines. HOMAGO crowd thoughtfully, carefully looks for intelligent people. (Hanging Out, Messing Around, and themes in this mess of scribbles and notes. Geeking Out) is a learning theory based on This is a group that focuses on research devoted to uncovering how youth innovation, technology, and digital Learning Lab, What’s That? learn and interact in their environments— learning, so it may seem strange that I fi rst heard about YOUMedia when the in school, out of school, and in youth they’re relying on paper and ink to take organization I work for, Saint Paul Public programming and spaces off ered in their ideas to the next level. But it works. Library, was awarded a grant to develop libraries and museums. Generally Themes emerge, teams are formed, and a library-sponsored learning lab in the speaking, it focuses on the idea that youth everyone gets down to business. community center we are building. (It’s need opportunities to feel comfortable This is the YOUMedia Network’s set to open in 2014.) Not very familiar (hanging out) before dipping their toes Summer Retreat in Welches, Oregon. with learning labs prior to this, I was soon into an activity (messing around), which The participants are all part of a network enthralled by the “early adopters”—some can lead to them successfully learning a of libraries and museums granted funding of the fi rst institutions to open learning skill and actually making things (geeking (from the Institute of Museum and Library labs—as I learned more about what out). It also recognizes that what adults Services) to start up digital learning labs in YOUMedia Chicago, ArtLab+ at the may think of as nonproductive behavior— such as chatting with friends, playing around with their phones, or looking JENNIFER LARSON manages the Youth Services Department at things up online—actually contributes, Saint Paul Public Library. She earned her MLIS at Saint Catherine and sometimes is a necessary part, to the University, chairs the library’s Teen Services Team, and is involved creative learning process for many teens. in its Createch programming as well as the YOUMedia Network, As you might expect, HOMAGO bringing technology and creativity into the lives of Saint Paul can be a tough sell for some of our colleagues, especially ones outside of youth. In 2013 she helped develop Saint Paul’s award-winning youth librarianship. If you are running a READ BRAVE initiative, which is a one-book program that program on photography, for instance, and encourages youth to respond to the text with media creation and a coworker sees a bunch of teens lounging civic involvement. around playing with their phones—and

22 YALS Young Adult Library Services Winter 2014 Larson

does not see that what’s going on on their other and fi nding a common ground in Createch sites. We also added an phones includes taking and captioning serving the youth of Saint Paul. As our additional branch library to our Createch photos—they might wonder why time library moves away from the role of “book rotation. and resources are being “wasted” on that provider” and into a diff erent model of We found that by off ering Createch program. Getting as many staff as possible service (for instance, using HOMAGO on a consistent schedule we were to understand HOMAGO is essential for principles to teach classes in coding for getting better attendance for our teen the program to succeed. This has proven to teens), it makes sense that we would work programming. Each week we off ered be a challenge for Saint Paul, particularly closely with Parks and Recreation. These activities involving technology: video as it relates to the innovative partnerships days I cannot imagine doing youth-serving poetry, stop motion animation, and so we’ve formed. Our main partner in work without our Parks partnership. on. Teens could join the activity if they creating the learning lab is our city Parks wanted, or they could hang out with and Recreation Department. Library and their friends, play with an iPad, or read a Parks staff will work closely together in the A Pilot to Start book. Teen response to the low-pressure lab facilitating programming, helping teens Since the physical space for our learning programming was consistently positive— create digital media, and staffi ng the space. lab was a couple years from completion the only thing they ever wanted to change when this project started, we decided to was more access to technology. We implement a pilot project. There were are constantly trying to catch up to the Parks and Rec: A Unique several goals for our pilot: we wanted demand. Library Partner to learn and practice off ering tech Saint Paul Library is unique among programming to teens, we wanted to the pool of YOUMedia grantees in introduce emerging technology to teens in Partnerships and partnering with our city’s Parks and the form of a mobile lab that could travel Relationships Make It Work Recreation Department in planning and from site to site, and we wanted to try a To help us catch up to demand and keep implementing our digital learning lab. new model of programming—instead of our programming fresh, we established The new building where our lab will planning isolated events for young adults key partnerships within our community. reside is a joint-use facility containing a that may or may not be well attended, we Besides partnering with our Parks library, walking track, fi tness center, and tried off ering consistent programming. Department, we also connected with gymnasium. At all the convenings with Thus, we introduced our Createch Labs. the Science Museum of Minnesota’s the grantees there was at least one person In the summer of 2012, we launched, on Youth Science Center and Saint Paul surprised by the fact that the library a consistent schedule, Createch (blending Neighborhood Network, a community and Parks Department are partners creating and technology) programming media center. Both groups intermittently on this project. Most partnerships in at two diff erent library branches and one come to our Createch sites with their own the YOUMedia Network are between recreation center. For instance, teen users youth leaders that develop programming museums and libraries. And, to be honest, at the Rondo branch know that every and lead teens through an activity, if someone had told me fi ve years ago I Tuesday from 4 p.m.–6 p.m. Createach with library staff developing their own would partner with the Parks Department takes place. programming on the off weeks. This on this sort of project, I might not have We started with one mobile lab allows for peer-to-peer mentoring, which believed it. However, this relationship that traveled between the three Createch we’ve discovered is so important in has truly changed the culture of both our locations. It contained fi ve iPads, a set of relationship building. Having someone the organizations. We now have recreation speakers, headphones, and a MacBook same age as a teen teaching skills makes centers regularly transporting youth to Pro. Today, a little over a year later, we’ve any program much more appealing to the the library so they can participate in our expanded to two mobile labs, each with age group. It also helps teens to foster programs. We have librarians bringing iPads, a MacBook, sewing machines, a healthy social skills. iPads into recreation centers and running Silhouette CAMEO cutter (electronic Partnerships have been an important tech programs there. We collaborate cutting machine that plugs into a PC or component not only in our learning together on projects, such as an all-day Mac with a USB cord), and more. This lab project in Saint Paul but across the Teen Advisory Retreat. It’s a slow process, technology allows our staff fl exible options nation in the YOUMedia Network. but we’re coming to understand each for programming at their respective It’s a theme that comes up again and

Winter 2014 Young Adult Library Services YALS 23 A Learning Lab Makes It in St. Paul

again. Our Createch programs would a professional development component very diverse group of people, including not be thriving and expanding as they to train library and Parks staff on how administrators and mentors and program are without our community partners. to manage our Createch programs, and, directors. There’s huge value in having so Establishing these partnerships can be eventually, the digital learning lab. A many perspectives in one group. challenging and time consuming, but the group of staff from Parks and libraries, Mentors are probably the payoff is huge. For instance, Saint Paul identifi ed as being skilled in youth work YOUMedia folks who inspire me most. Neighborhood Network not only brings and open to new ideas and creativity, These are the adults working directly their high-end videography equipment to meet weekly. They are called the “Pretzels with teens, teaching them skills and the libraries and recreation centers, they Team,” so named for their fl exibility and fostering relationships with the youth. also bring adults and youth trained in “saltiness.” They describe themselves as All YOUMedia learning labs have a how to instruct teens on how to use the a community of practitioners who foster mentoring program. At YOUMedia technology. Pooling our resources means innovation, shape attitudes, and refl ect on Chicago, for instance, they have mentors teens have more access to knowledge, their work. The group has been going for that teach specifi c skills, like fashion, technology, and mentors. Our partners almost eighteen months now, and together videography, and sound recordering. get a chance to expand their programming they have planned a staff development Selecting the right mentors can be a tough out in the community, as well as take day, worked on the Createch project, and process, and one that Saint Paul is still advantage of the library’s resources. are planning development for staff of the exploring. The city hired an AmeriCorps Everyone wins, most importantly our new joint-use facility, focusing on training VISTA member to help us navigate the youth. them to be eff ective youth workers that process; we wanted someone who could We learned early on in the project are comfortable working in a new model focus solely on devising a strategy to that the core of our Createch pilot—and of service. recruit good mentors and implement a extending into our planning process system for maintaining quality mentorship for the learning lab—is based on for our teens. It’s a big job. relationships. We can spend millions Training and Working in the YOUMedia Network of dollars on the latest technology Mentoring Required as I help plan for our Teen Learning Lab and digital learning tools, but teens Training and development for (which has yet to be named as our youth need to feel comfortable, welcomed, learning lab mentors was a hot topic are still working on the perfect one) has and connected to the staff before they at our Welches retreat. YOUMedia been one of the highlights of my career consider entering the mobile space. recognizes the importance of having as a youth services librarian. Every time I It became apparent quickly that our time to refl ect, and how easy it is to meet with the Network, whether virtually advertising eff orts did not get us more forget to include refl ection in one’s or in person, I leave feeling inspired and Createch attendees, but having staff work. It’s one of the main focuses of the powerful. We’re creating something that were willing to chat with teens network and why every convening and larger than the sum of our individual and extend a personal invitation to the retreat and gathering of the network is institutions. We’re transforming how program garnered amazing results. You special. There’s an energy that comes libraries and museums work with teens. need the right staff to work in these from sharing with other people who We’re constantly bringing connected environments. Obviously they have to understand your passions and work. learning into our spaces and rethinking be comfortable with teens, and they also We solve problems together and share all our programming, We’re supporting need on-going training in youth work ideas. When you build something new each other and fostering change and and adolescent development. They have and ground breaking in your institution, growth in ourselves and our organizations. to have some technology skills and a there are a lot of challenges that come We’re relating in new ways and fi nding willingness to explore digital media. They with it. Knowing that you have a new opportunities for partnerships. As have to be fl exible—programming can fall network of people doing similar work our grants come to a close, we’re just apart, technology can cause issues, and with a similar vision, even if they are beginning to see how powerful we truly sometimes things just don’t go the way scattered across the nation, and knowing can be. I am proud to be a part of the you expect. A sense of humor helps, too. that you have that support can make YOUMedia Nation, and I’m excited to To help develop skills needed by all the diff erence. I know it has for me. move to the next chapter of our work youth-serving staff , Saint Paul established The YOUMedia Network is a very big, together. YALS

24 YALS Young Adult Library Services Winter 2014 feature Hot Spot: Teens, Tech, & Learning

often talk about how the Web is a handcrafted community that can only Learn to Code: I represent the world that we live in when individuals build webpages. In January 2012 I gave a workshop on hacking the Web to YALSA members at the ALA It’s a Life Skill Midwinter Meeting in Dallas. There I talked about Mozilla Webmaker (https:// webmaker.org/), gave an introduction By Jessica Klein to HTML and CSS and advocated for learning how to understand, contribute, and code the Web in order to protect it. Through creation of content and pages on the Web, you can make your mark and be prepared me to take on this small bit of me, were all extremely worried about our part of the growing global conversation leadership. Rockawayhelp.com allowed me parents who had decided to not evacuate), that happens in this space. I was prepared and my team to coordinate and mobilize we created multiple social media channels. to write this article in the same mind-set— volunteers as well as give up-to-date, To this day we continue to have active but I feel compelled to tell you a personal hyperlocal information on how the people conversations on Facebook and Twitter. story instead and how it changed both my and places in Rockaway were doing after Some of the lessons we learned during views on coding and life. the hurricane. Rockaway Help (this group the hurricane are the same lessons that of volunteers and locals that formed via you learn every day at libraries or in the the website) had an active presence on open educational resource community. We Hurricane Sandy the physical streets of our community: learned that when you work in the open In November 2012, Hurricane Sandy hit going into houses, cleaning out basements, (more about that in a moment) you can New York and devastated—and in many connecting people who didn’t know where create community. When I was sitting at ways destroyed—the community that I their family members were, working home worrying if my parents survived the grew up in, Rockaway Beach, New York. with the veterans at Team Rubicon (An hurricane, I went online and connected The day after the storm, I went to my organization of military veterans who with friends and other Rockaway neighborhood and saw that people could deploy as fi rst responders in natural residents. They too were watching the not communicate with each other or the disasters—http://teamrubiconusa.org/) local news and having panic attacks about world outside Rockaway. Imagine no and the software developers at Palantir. their homes and families. We shared cell phone usage, no Internet, no power. Along with some friends I made via Twitter information, brainstormed ideas, and When I returned home I built a small during the night of the hurricane (who, like gave each other the confi dence to venture website, rockawayhelp.com, to give people the information they needed and to create a web of support for families who could JESSICA KLEIN is dedicated to connecting people and ideas through not get in touch with their families who new technologies and interactive experiences. As a community-based were in one way or the other trapped designer, Klein is currently the Open Badges Creative Lead at Mozilla, in Rockaway due to the storm. It was where she focuses on promoting openness and creativity in formal and this act of webmaking that launched my informal learning environments. Klein created the Hackasaurus project, participation in protecting and rebuilding which helps teens learn how to code through hacking. This project later my physical community. It opened my eyes became part of the larger Webmaker (www.webmaker.org) platform. to how webmaking and understanding A Rockaway Beach native, Klein cofounded Rockaway Help in the wake what’s “under the hood” of the Web can help build and strengthen community. of Hurricane Sandy, a hyper-local news and civic hacking grassroots col- The work that I do in the open source lective and was named a White House Champion of Change for her civic community and the open educational hacktivism. Klein has an M.F.A. in Design and Technology from Parsons resource community as a software designer and a B.A. in Art History from Mount Holyoke College.

Winter 2014 Young Adult Library Services YALS 25 Learn to Code: It’s a Life Skill

back into our community when the storm to communicate out. And when we got skill or expertise with those that need it ended. I was scared, but knew that I had those volunteers, we quickly learned the most. an online community to support me. that it was going to be very diffi cult to More recently, we hosted a bunch This is something that I learned while effi ciently organize 1000-plus people of hack jams in conjunction with working at Mozilla: if you work in the open, in one day, so we partnered with Team the National Day of Civic Hacking, you can share information and connect to a Rubicon who had systems in place and where these were sessions not run by like-minded community. We do this daily an established plan. This is common in engineers, but rather by designers and with our webmaker activities, starting with media making and coding: you start a technology-minded folks and local Hackasaurus two years ago. project and then get a collaborator (or community members. The goal of these collaborators) to take on parts to take events was to crowdsource community your work up a level. during the rebuilding process. Initially The Power of Webmaking Doing software design, I usually community members came up with a Hackasaurus is a suite of tools and throw out an idea, test it with various few distinct areas to focus their work: curriculum that make it easy for anyone users, fi gure out what parts of it work and emergency response and prep, rebuilding, to learn webmaking through remixing what parts don’t work, and then build maintaining community integrity, and HTML and CSS in places that you are on the idea to make a new prototype. It’s web literacy. already inhabiting on the Web. You can messy, but it works because you get your currently explore these off erings by visiting concept out there in the hands of real webmaker.org. Hackasaurus was initially users. We were constantly doing this at A Handcrafted Community launched by two radical librarians, Atul Rockawayhelp. We really had never dealt The Web is known as being a powerful Varma and myself, and then expanded with disaster relief before, so we had to be resource and search tool, but unlike into this massive OER (Open Education comfortable with trying things out, failing traditional sources, the Web is designed Resource) that people immediately a little, and building more effi cient ways of as a handcrafted community—by users responded to. (Now this content is doing things. for users. So if you aren’t making your hosted on webmaker.org.) Why did they An example of this was that we fi rst mark on the Web for your community, respond to it? Because we blogged, shared found ourselves standing in front of the someone else is going to do it for you. free resources, and created content as a local church, collecting addresses for Here is your opportunity to inform the group—failing, iterating, and improving people who needed help and then assigning thinking, literature, and research on your publicly. them to crews of volunteers. We quickly world. How does this connect to libraries? learned that this wasn’t the most effi cient With very little movement, you Many youth have their only out-of-school way to organize our eff orts, because we could literally become an activist—it’s exposure to the Internet at the library, were too few people to get everything powerful. One way to maintain your so instead of having a consumption-level done—so we streamlined the system by community integrity is to create content relationship with content on the Web, creating forms through the website. and websites for your community. libraries have the opportunity to help We found that maintaining Rockaway is not just a community youth become makers and have agency in involvement from volunteers was a that was devastated by a hurricane, shaping this powerful platform. challenge, so we designed a badge system but rather a kickass, fun-loving beach In a disaster situation like Rockaway, using the Mozilla Open Badges— town. We can use the Web to show a lot of things needed to be done and I openbadges.org—infrastructure. Badges this and not just through social media, quickly realized that I was not able to do allowed us to recognize those who but through collaborative webmaking. it all. For the website eff ort, we leveraged were already involved and acknowledge Many locals wanted to learn how to do the digital strategy agency Blue State expertise. Expertise during this emergency just that. In essence they were interested Digital who kindly volunteered with us response could be anything from being a in “rebranding” their community. Given and helped us to set up a database, an documentarian to really knowing how to their passion and a specifi c goal in mind, eff ort led by Matt Kelley. Additionally, shovel muck out of a garage. Also, creating learning to code was the necessary step we had some good bloggers and other a system for motivation, tracking progress to do what they felt that they needed to volunteers who were on the ground and expertise is simply practical in that do. We used the Mozilla X-Ray Goggles, and could give us up-to-the-minute info it helps match volunteers with a certain a bookmarklet that enables you to remix

26 YALS Young Adult Library Services Winter 2014 Klein

webpages and more advanced users dabbled Public Library, teens used the X-Ray with Thimble, which is a web-based code Goggles to remix their branch webpage editor that is kind of like bumper bowling to make it more personal and refl ect local for people learning to code. interests. Finally, think about ways to Coding is a life skill. Kind of like maintain community through technology swimming, you might not learn it in the by instituting a badge system through classroom, but it’s one of those things Open Badges. that you are learning out of school, in Creating an online community libraries, at home, with your friends—it’s through code and design can help support personal and informative. You can easily communities offl ine in surprising ways. get started by tinkering with sites like Learning can start in community spaces Mozilla Webmaker or, for more formal like libraries or in the middle of the night instruction, check out www.codeschool. of a hurricane. Webmaking is personal— com. Think about places in your library it’s handcrafted and provides you with a where technology can help to build canvas to share your very local story with community or change the way that your a global community. Learning to code is community is looked at and encourage a very small action that you can take that blended learning. One way to do this is will ultimately transform your relationship to hold a thematic hack jam or learn to with the Web from consumption to civic code club. For example, in the New York engagement. YALS

Winter 2014 Young Adult Library Services YALS 27 feature Hot Spot: Teens, Tech, & Learning

very important ones—in larger networks Badges: Show of learning.”4 Learning does happen anywhere, anytime, but recognition of that learning does not. The learning we do in museums, What You Know libraries, and on the Web can and does enrich us, but the knowledge and skills we gain are rarely recognized. Badges for By Sheryl Grant learning are designed to change that.

Why Badges? In the “technology-enabled, information- adges for learning are digital In 2011, Secretary Arne Duncan rich, deeply interconnected world” that credentials that recognize a person’s of the U.S. Department of Education Duncan describes, badges are found in B skills and achievements.1 We introduced digital badges to a national peer networks and game environments often associate credentials with degrees audience for the fi rst time. During a that pervade our highly social Web. or diplomas, but credential means a “fact, live-streamed event in Washington, D.C., Predating the Internet, badges were qualifi cation, achievement, quality, or Duncan told a crowd, “Badges can help used to signal rank and membership feature used as a recommendation or speed the shift from credentials that within a group, whether literally affi xed form of identifi cation.”2 In other words, simply measure seat time, to ones that to a uniform or fi guratively evoked credentials provide a way to vouch that more accurately measure competency.”3 to symbolize the status, achievement, we are who we say we are, and have the Together with the MacArthur reputation, or membership within a social qualities we claim to have. Traditional Foundation, government agencies, class.5 Badges provided social proof for credentials like degrees are critical to corporations, and nonprofi t organizations, desired attributes, and functioned as meaningful employment, and yet when Secretary Duncan launched the “Badges both incentive and reward while rapidly we fi nd ourselves vying with 200 other for Lifelong Learning” initiative and conveying important information about candidates for a single job, we begin the started a national conversation about identity. In today’s networked digital age-old practice of fl uffi ng up our resumes. learning, assessment, and opportunity, environment, badges function the same We may add a list of skills like HTML, the core of what digital badges represent. way, whether in video games or social CSS, Microsoft Excel, or Dreamweaver. “Today’s technology-enabled, information- media marketing campaigns. Today, We add work experiences that hopefully rich, deeply interconnected world means they do all that and more, as tokens that convey our leadership qualities, our project learning not only can—but should— represent goal setting, instruction, and management skills, and our ability to happen anywhere, anytime. We need to reputation.6 As the Internet evolves into connect with youth. After we land the job, recognize these experiences, whether the a seemingly limitless site of learning, new credentials start to go stale, so we update environments are physical or online, and forms of assessment have emerged, driven our resumes with lines of text about new whether learning takes place in schools, largely by the tools and social practices we things we can do. Digital badges do the colleges, or adult education centers, use to rate, rank, recognize, and reward same thing as credentials, but they do a or in afterschool, workplace, military, the contributions and participation of little more. To unpack what badges for or community settings. In short, we others online. learning can do and why they matter, must begin to see schools, colleges, and Assessment, a form of evaluation we consider where they come from. classrooms as central points—though still often equate with school, is actually an “integral part of all human learning” that arises whenever social groups seek ways Sheryl Grant is Director of Social Networking for the HASTAC/ to mentor and police participants.7 We MacArthur Foundation Digital Media and Learning Competition tend to think of assessment as something and a doctoral student at the University of North Carolina, Chapel that happens in classrooms and on tests Hill School of Information and Library Science. because school is traditionally where

28 YALS Young Adult Library Services Winter 2014 Grant

learning gets counted. Our networked, participation, digital badges are gaining kinds of learning programs, connected to connected, technology-mediated world traction, not only as viable credentials, but many kinds of assessments. Just as there says otherwise. Assessment, like learning, as relevant and useful ways to recognize are many types of learning content and in fact happens anywhere, anytime, skills and knowledge.11 For youth, this programs to deliver that content, there are online and offl ine, inside and outside the issue of authoritativeness and credibility many types of badge systems, including classroom, throughout our lives. Mentors, is even more acute, due to the “culture gap ones that are combinations of offl ine and experts, and peers assess us both formally between educational systems designed online learning. and informally, and whether we learn in in the industrial age and the emerging More innovative approaches are school or out, we are evaluated against learning practices of the knowledge age.”12 happening among institutions that national, organizational, and industry Many young adults are immersed in historically have never issued credentials, standards. Badges are the connectors, the mediated activities that revolve around especially as currency with value outside pieces that link this learning, assessment, games, photography, music, apps, print, their programs. Museums, libraries, and opportunity together across all parts television, image, video, and voice and professional associations, youth of our lives. text communication. This mediated organizations, and afterschool programs Digital badge advocates claim environment is rich with learning represent only a handful of entities that see that by validating a range of skills and experiences that expand and diversify potential for badges to impact their learners. achievements not currently assessed meaningful life pathways, connecting These organizations represent a wide range in traditional K-20 schooling, and by youth to new opportunities. Badges have of learning content, pedagogical approaches, doing so in a way that also validates the potential to make this learning count in and assessment types. As these innovators more granular skills, badges can meet ways that traditional credentials have not. consider how to measure what counts, needs not currently being met.8 In Open In response to the Badges for Lifelong they make assessment and design decisions Badges for Lifelong Learning, a white paper Learning initiative, organizations are that not only impact their learners, but the coauthored by the Mozilla Foundation designing systems that integrate badges broader experiment about what we value and Peer-to-Peer University, a group of into their learning content. The net eff ect and how that knowledge is evaluated. learners experience “a problem in making of emerging badge systems is a marketplace their knowledge and skills visible and of credentials that are no longer tethered consequential in terms that are recognized predominantly to schools and universities. Assessment and Badges by formal educational institutions and Many of these nontraditional learning Schools and the Web have one thing broader career ecosystems.”9 These learner institutions are issuing credentials for the in common: a fundamental drive to composites are intended to refl ect how fi rst time, building digital badge systems increase participation. Most schools use a people acquire career-ready skills and that have the potential to change the way combination of punishments and rewards knowledge in the 21st century, whether their learners issue, display, and share to motivate learners. On the Web, a mix that learning is assessed through experts, credentials with others online. If badges of social, mobile, and immediacy motivates computers, or peers, and whether it takes become synonymous with credibility and people to participate. In 2006, Internet place inside or outside school. transparency, nontraditional institutions researchers estimated that only 1 percent of learning could end up validating the of people on the Internet contribute kind of interest-based learning and peer content, 9 percent edit, and the rest Learning and Badges assessment that schools are slow to consume what others produce.13 We can Our 20th century model of education is recognize. see that much of the online innovation in based on the “assumption that teaching Schools can and probably will the past decade has focused on technology is necessary for learning to occur,” and eventually issue digital badges that we can for deeper social participation, with yet digital technologies have made display on the Web, on mobile phones, reading and contributing on one end it possible for us to learn anywhere, social media platforms, personal blogs, or of the spectrum, to collaborating and anytime, teacher or no teacher.10 As a websites. But a conventional badge system leading on the far end.14 Reading content, result, how we learn in the 21st century is that functions independent of any changes tagging photos, rating contributions, shifting from “issues of authoritativeness to pre-existing systems of assessment fails editing wikis, sharing videos, posting to issues of credibility, and within this to make itself relevant. As badges spread, blogs, producing webinars, or developing changing context of learning and online we will see badge systems overlaid on all open-source software—we are learning,

Winter 2014 Young Adult Library Services YALS 29 Badges: Show What You Know

doing, making, and contributing massive credential, which exists separate from What does badge proof mean? amounts of online content. One surprising the proof of learning associated with it. Technically, a digital badge is a PNG engine driving this collective activity is By the time we see someone’s degree, fi le embedded or “baked” with JavaScript social assessment. Interest-based social the criteria and evidence for how it was Object Notation (JSON) data that participation has exploded in the last earned is long gone. Badges, however, conforms to a set of standard technical fi fteen years, and so have new ways of are transparent and information rich. specifi cations. Each badge contains user assessing each other, whether through Everything is bundled into one click, so identity information in the form of an voting, ranking, commenting, or other we can see what someone did to earn e-mail address, as well as a set of metadata forms of peer feedback.15 the credential, including a link to the that includes the badge description, issuer, eBay implemented one of the earliest, evidence behind the learning, maybe a issue date, evidence URL, image, and most successful examples of peer-to-peer testimonial from the instructor, or an additional information required to make evaluation that allowed buyers to rate offi cial endorsement from a third party. the badge fully portable so that it can be sellers. Since then, similar systems have Some badges have an expiration date to displayed anywhere on the Web. This proliferated, including peer ratings of signal that the skill needs to be renewed metadata is what makes digital badges reviews and comments (The New York each year. The ability to click badges information rich and portable, and without Times), voting on the quality of questions and view relevant information about a it, institutions could issue badges, but and answers (Stack Overfl ow, Quora), and learner’s skills and knowledge adds a layer there would be no “badge ecosystem” of recommending the expertise and merits of of trust to credentials that is more than systems to recognize the badges. In other colleagues (LinkedIn). Engaging in peer a technological fl ourish. Developing a words, badges would exist only within assessment is its own form of participation, highly credible way to authenticate what the institutional technical systems that and in systems like Amazon, individuals someone knows challenges the existing issued them and lack the information-rich, can vote on the quality of comments left system, and raises profound questions transparent, and portable features that set by others. Nothing inspires feedback more about what credentials mean and who them apart. Badges can be “hosted,” which than commenting on someone’s expertise.16 decides what counts. If digital badges means that the badges live at a stable URL The same is true about commenting on “challenge the monopoly on credentialing to show that the badge exists, and is hosted someone’s values.17 While research on held by conventional degree-granting by the issuing institution. Badges can also badges is still in its infancy, some studies institutions,” and nontraditional learning be “signed,” which is a way for a third show interesting results. On Wikipedia, institutions can decide what counts, what party to endorse a badge. Professional researchers found that contributions does credentialing look like in the future?18 organizations could endorse badges that increased by 60 percent after editors were Here is what it looks like today. meet certain criteria, and add an additional awarded badges.18 All of this activity is We progress through classes and grade layer of validity. visible and easy to count. Community levels after demonstrating satisfactory Mozilla, developers of the open- size, page views, downloads, and temporal performance on exams and other criteria. source Firefox browser, are responsible for patterns measure participation, and After successful completion of course the Open Badges Infrastructure (OBI), clicking, viewing, tagging, rating, posting, requirements, we accumulate credentials the set of standard metadata specs that uploading, commenting, editing, and other in the form of diplomas, certifi cates, or connect digital badges across the Web. For types of contributions have become easy degrees. Schools and universities issue our digital badges to work within an ecosystem metrics to track.19 There is no shortage credentials by handing them out on stage where organizations can issue them, of things to count online, and no paucity or sending them by mail, and the most earners can display them, and institutions of metrics for measuring. The only thing common way we display them is to add can recognize them, badges must contain lacking is a standardized, credible way to a line of text to our transcript or resume. standard technical specs that are hard- recognize and share what we know, across In a digital badge world, those lines of coded into the badge. The OBI includes all of the contexts where learning occurs. text are displayed as badges that we share both the open technical specifi cations on websites, social media platforms, and referenced above and the badge “backpack” mobile devices. For skills we want to or repository, a central place online where What Is a Badge? demonstrate with greater granularity, people can collect, manage, and display A badge is an image fi le with information badges will provide that additional layer their badges. An individual who earns a in it. Compare that to a traditional of proof. badge issued from an institution must then

30 YALS Young Adult Library Services Winter 2014 Grant

“push” this badge to the backpack, and Figure 1: Google trends shows a spike in search terms for “digital from there, can “pull” the badges to other badges” between 2011 and 2013. OBI-compatible systems on the Web. Empirical research about badge digital badges + Add term Search term systems is limited; even so, a growing number of nontraditional and traditional institutions of learning are interested Interest over time News headlines Forecast in building digital badge systems even before fully functioning use cases have been deployed and evaluated. While the intellectual and technological scaff olding for a robust badge ecosystem is still new, the momentum and interest around badges is taking off (Figure 1). In 2012, the Humanities, Arts, Sciences, Technology Alliance and Collaboratory (HASTAC) 2005 2007 2009 2011 2013 awarded $2 million in funding to 30 organizations to build badge system solution to cause the kind of systemic 2. John Simpson and Edmond Weiner, platforms. Microsoft, Intel, NASA, the social change that fundamentally changes “credential, n.” def. 3b, The Oxford English Smithsonian, University of California– the institutions that teach and employ Dictionary, Oxford University Press Davis, the Adams 50 School District in us.22 The extent of that change, though, (accessed Sept. 2013). Colorado, Girl Scouts, 4-H, YALSA, and depends on how organizations design their 3. Arne Duncan, “Digital Badges for Learning: other major organizations are only some badge systems and the choices they make Remarks Made by Secretary Arne Duncan of the groups launching badge systems. about learning and assessment. It is true at the 4th Annual Launch of the Digital In 2013, hundreds of cities, universities, that not all badge systems will transform Media and Learning Competition,” www. corporations, schools, and professional the status quo, but an open marketplace ed.gov/news/speeches/digital-badges- organizations signed on to the 2 Million of digital badges may change how we learning (accessed Nov. 20, 2013). Better Futures (www.2MBetterFutures. communicate who we are and what we 4. Duncan, 2011. org) badge commitment launched by know to others, and that could have far- 5. John Simpson and Edmond Weiner, the MacArthur Foundation at Clinton reaching consequences. Badge systems “badge, n.,” The Oxford English Global Initiative, and Chicago announced have the potential to select what kind of Dictionary, Oxford University Press, www. it will host its second citywide Summer of learning gets counted, where and how that oed.com/view/Entry/14550?rskey=Hsdu Learning badge program next year after a learning occurs, who assesses it, and how. Hp&result=1 (accessed Nov. 20, 2013). successful fi rst pilot in 2013. If choices we make while designing new 6. Judd Antin and Elizabeth F. Churchill, Digital technologies like badges have technologies infl uence the way we associate “Badges in Ssocial Mmedia: A Ssocial the potential to become a “default mode of with one another and the sociotechnical Ppsychological Pperspective,.” In social ordering.”20 We know that badges systems in which we function, then Proceedings of CHI 2011, British intersect with powerful social and technical digital badges may become the catalyst Columbia, Canada: ACM. systems, especially during the fi rst quarter that validates new norms for learning, 7. James Gee, “Human Action and Social of our lives when our chief preoccupation assessment, and opportunity.23 YALS Groups as the Natural Home of is admission to and graduation from Assessment: Thoughts on 21st Century college.21 They also answer a social need Learning and Assessment,” Valerie J. not currently being addressed. Traditional References and Notes Shute, Betsy J. Becker (eds.), Innovative credentials issued by universities and 1. Badges have also been referred to as Assessments for the 21st Century: schools do not recognize all the learning “micro-credentials,” “achievements,” Supporting Educational Needs, New York: that happens, nor do they teach and and “open badges.” For consistency, the Springer. recognize many of the skills employers terminology used in this article is “digital 8. Jeff rey R. Young, “Merit Badges for the might value. Badges are a “good enough” badges” or “badges.” Job Market,” The Wall Street Journal,

Winter 2014 Young Adult Library Services YALS 31 Badges: Show What You Know

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142 alertbox/participation_inequality.html 19. Preece and Schneiderman, 1989. 405297020430140457717091222151663 (accessed Nov. 20, 2013). 20. Lucas D. Introna, “Maintaining the 8.html (accessed Nov. 20, 2013). 14. Jennifer Preece and Ben Schneiderman, Reversibility of Foldings: Making 9. Mozilla Foundation and Peer 2 Peer “Reader-to-Leader Framework: the Ethics (Politics) of Information University, in collaboration with The Motivating Technology-Mediated Social Technology Visible,” Ethics and MacArthur Foundation, 2011, “Open Participation,” AIS Transactions on Human- Information Technology 9: 11–25. Badges for Lifelong Learning,” https:// Computer Interaction 1, no. 1: 13–32. 21. Nicholass Lehmann, The Big Test: wiki.mozilla.org/images/b/b1/ 15. David Huff aker and Jennifer Lai, The Secret History of the American OpenBadges-Working-Paper_092011. “Motivating Expertise-Sharing in Meritocracy, New York: Farrar, Strauss pdf Online Communities: Altruism or and Giroux. 10. Doug Thomas and John Seely Brown, Self-interest?” Computer Science, IBM 22. Clay Christensen, “Disruptive Innovation A New Culture of Learning: Cultivating Research Report, www.davehuff aker. and Catalytic Change in Higher the Imagination for a World of Constant com/papers/Huff akerLai2006-Expertise- Education,” Educause: Forum for Higher Change. Publisher: authors. sharinginOnlineCommunities.pdf Education, pp. 43–46, http://net. 11. Cathy Davidson and David Theo (accessed Nov. 20, 2013). educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ff 0810s.pdf Goldberg, “The Future of Learning 16. Kimberly Ling, et al., “Using Social (accessed Oct. 10, 2013). Institutions in a Digital Age,” The Psychology to Motivate Contributions 23. Langdon Winner, “Do Artifacts Have John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur to Online Communities,” Journal of Politics?” D. MacKenzie and J. Wajcman Foundation Reports on Digital Media and Computer Mediated Communication 10, (eds.), The Social Shaping of Technology, Learning, MIT Press. no. 4: Article 10. Open University Press, pp. 28–40. Also 12. Allan Collins and Richard Halverson, 17. Stacey Kuznetsov, “Motivations of see M. Olneck, “Insurgent Credentials: Rethinking Education in the Age of Contributors to Wikipedia,” ACM SIGCAS A Challenge to Established Institutions Technology: The Digital Revolution and Computers and Society 36, no. 2: 1. of Higher Education.” Paper presented Schooling in America, New York: Teachers 18. Amout van de Rijt and Michael Restivo, to “Education in a New Society: The College Press. “Experimental Study of Informal Growing Interpenetration of Education 13. James Nielsen, “Participation Rewards in Peer Production,” PLOS in Modern Life” at Radcliff e Institute for Inequality: Encouraging More Users to ONE 7, no. 3, www.plosone.org/article/ Advanced Study, Harvard University, Contribute,” Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox, info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal. Cambridge, Massachusetts, April 26–27, October 9, 2006. www.useit.com/ pone.0034358 (accessed Nov. 20, 2013). 2012.

32 YALS Young Adult Library Services Winter 2014 feature Hot Spot: Teens, Tech, & Learning

t’s clear that teens and young adults today are operating in a diff erent Teens and Tech: I technological environment than previous generations, but the impact this environment is having on their relationship to libraries is less certain. What the Research Says Many public library staff members have told the Pew Research Center’s Internet Project that they want to build connections with younger patrons but By Kathryn Zickuhr often have diffi culty maintaining these connections as the youth age. We fi nd some evidence of this in our research. For their lives, the cell phone has become the digital experiences, but the landscape instance, even though older teens (ages primary means by which many of them has shifted in recent years. Among teen 16–17) are one of the age groups most access the Internet. In fact, 50 percent of Internet users, 81 percent use social likely to have used a public library in the teen smartphone users say they use the networking sites. Some 94 percent of teen past year, more than a third of recent Internet mostly with their phone. social media users say they have an account library users in the next older age group While cell phones and smartphones on Facebook. Moreover, Twitter use is (ages 18–24) say their library use has tend to be “owned” by a teen personally, on the rise: 24 percent of online teens use decreased within the past fi ve years. And adoption rates of other devices, such as Twitter as of September 2012, up from younger respondents in general are less e-readers or tablets, might instead refl ect 16 percent in 2011. likely than older adults to say that libraries shared household use. For instance, even Though Facebook is by far the are important to them and their families. though 93 percent of teens have a computer most popular social media platform and In order to shed more light on these or access to one at home, 71 percent say a central part of many teens’ social lives, issues, and the potential role for public that the computer they use most often its popularity can also be a downside. In libraries and librarians going forward, this is one that they share with their parents, focus groups, many teens complained article brings together fi ndings from three siblings, or other members of their family.2 about the increasing adult presence on major pieces of work the Pew Internet Project It’s worth noting that even with all Facebook (including parents and school has done in the past year: an overview of of these screens, teens’ reading habits are administrators), as well as “oversharing” technology in teens’ lives; the role of libraries still grounded in print. Some 90 percent of and “drama” among their peers; some in the lives of older teens and young adults; 16–17-year-olds read at least one book in are turning to less popular services such and the impact of the Internet on middle and 2012, with 85 percent reading at least one as Twitter, Instagram, or Tumblr to high school students’ research habits. book in print, making them more likely to carve out a small niche for themselves, have done so than any other age groups. in addition to maintaining a presence on Meanwhile, just 25 percent of these older Facebook.4 The Technology teens read an e-book in that time (a rate on “I think Facebook can be fun, but also in Teens’ Lives par with the general population).3 it’s drama central,” a 14-year-old in one An overwhelming 95 percent of teens ages of our focus groups said. “On Facebook, 12–17 use the Internet as of September people imply things and say things, even 2012. Most teens (78 percent) now have a Teens and Social Media just by a like, that they wouldn’t say in cell phone, though fewer (37 percent) own We also know that social media is an real life.” A 16-year-old described her a smartphone specifi cally. important, and growing, part of teens’ approach to the various social media Overall, about three in four (74 percent) teens are “mobile Internet users” who say they access the Internet on cell phones, KATHRYN ZICKUHR is a Research Associate at the Pew Research tablets, and other mobile devices at least Center’s Internet Project, where she studies how Americans use occasionally.1 Yet while many teens have public libraries in the digital age. For more information, visit http:// a variety of Internet-connected devices in pewinternet.org.

Winter 2014 Young Adult Library Services YALS 33 Teens and Tech

percent of 16–17-year-olds get reading Learn More: Teen Gadget Ownership recommendations from a library or librarian, signifi cantly more than older Among American teens ages 12–17: age groups.5 Most younger Americans 93% of teens have a computer or have access to one at home. 71% of teens with under 30 also say it’s “very important” · home computer access say the laptop or desktop they use most often is one they for libraries to provide books to the share with other family members. community. 78% of teens now have a cell phone. This includes the 37% of teens who have Yet even as they use and value · smartphones (up from just 23% in 2011). 23% of teens have a tablet computer, a level comparable to the general adult traditional library services, younger · population. Americans are also interested in various new technologies at libraries. Younger Source: Mary Madden et al., “Teens and Technology 2013,” Pew Internet, March 13, 2013, http:// patrons are more likely than older pewinternet.org/Reports/2013/Teens-and-Tech.aspx. patrons to access the library’s Internet or computers. For instance, and three- quarters of Americans under 30 say it outlets this way: “Instagram is mostly for for instance, we found that these younger is “very important” for public libraries pictures. Twitter is mostly for just saying Americans are just as likely as older adults to provide free Internet access to their what you are thinking. Facebook is both of to have visited a public library in person in communities. Though relatively few them combined so you have to give a little the past year. Once there, younger patrons patrons borrow e-books (about 5 percent bit of each . . . I posted more pictures on borrow printed books and browse the of all recent library users have borrowed Instagram than on Facebook. Twitter is shelves at similar rates as older patrons. an e-book from the library), awareness more natural.” In many ways, public libraries play a is an issue for all age groups: 57 percent larger role in younger readers’ universes of Americans do not know if their local than for older adults. For instance, public library lends out e-books, including Public Libraries in Teens’ Lives readers ages 16–17 are more likely 53 percent of those under age 30. Our research has found that younger than older patrons to have borrowed Additionally, one of the most Americans’ usage of public libraries the last book they read from the library fascinating fi ndings in our research was includes a blend of traditional and (37 percent) than they are to have that young people are especially likely to technological services. Looking broadly purchased it (26 percent), a pattern that value libraries as physical spaces. Some at the activities of Americans ages 16–29, is reversed for older readers. And 36 60 percent of patrons ages 16–29 say they go to the library as a general gathering space (to study, sit and read, or watch or Figure 1: What younger Americans do at libraries. listen to media), signifi cantly more than Among Americans ages 16-29 who have visited a library or bookmobile in person in older patrons (See Figure 1). the past 12 months, the percentage who have done the following activities.

Borrow a music CD Borrow an audio book Student Research Class or lecture for adults Attend a meeting in the Digital Age Borrow a DVD or video Print magazines/newspapers In a survey and in focus groups we Events for children/teens conducted last year among Advanced

Activity Get help from a librarian Use a research database Placement (AP) and National Writing Sit, read, & study, or watch/listen to media Research topics of interest Project (NWP) teachers, we explored the Borrow print books Browse the shelves degree to which the Internet and other 0 1020304050607080 digital technologies are shaping the way Ages 16-29 today’s middle and high school students Source: Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Library Services Survey of 2,252 people ages “do research.” 16 and older conducted October 15-November 10, 2012. The survey was conducted in English and Most educators agreed that the Spanish and on landline and cell phones. Internet and digital tools have had

34 YALS Young Adult Library Services Winter 2014 Zickuhr

a generally positive impact on their Figure 2. Research tools teachers say their students are “very likely” to use. students’ research habits. Yet these teachers, who instruct some of the most Among Advanced Placement and National Writing Project teachers surveyed, the per- centage who said their students are “very likely” to use each of the following sources in academically successful middle and high a typical research assignment school students in the United States, also observed many mixed eff ects. Our Student-oriented search engines (Sweet Search) fi ndings may best be summarized by Printed books (other than textbooks) something a teacher said in one of our A research librarian at school or public library focus groups: “The Internet makes doing Online databases such as EBSCO or JSTOR research easier. Easier to do well and Textbooks (print or electronic) News sites of major news orgs (NYT, CNN) easier to do poorly.”6 SparkNotes, CliffNotes, other study guides For instance, most teachers strongly Their peers agreed that the Internet “enables students YouTube or other social media sites to fi nd and use resources that would Wikipedia or other online encyclopedias otherwise not be available to them,” and Google or other general search engines many added that for motivated students, 0 20406080 100 the Internet can off er previously unheard Very likely of opportunities. “Students are often in a Source: The Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project Online Survey of Teachers, March 7 to rush,” one NWP teacher said. “However, April 23, 2012, n=2,462 middle and high school teachers. More: pewinternet.org when they are on to something that they are really keen on the chances of them being able to go deep increases where students and others have always into Google. The funny thing is they dramatically.” struggled. It is labor intensive and always actually get disappointed when it doesn’t Yet sifting through all this requires a growing understanding of the spit back an answer.” information requires a much more topic and fi eld, which evolves over time.” sophisticated understanding of how to 83 percent of teachers agree that the read and vet a source, a skill that many amount of information available online Teaching Online Skills said students had not yet developed. today is simply overwhelming for most Though students need to learn digital In a focus group, one NWP teacher students. research skills, teachers say there are said, “I think research has gotten When we asked teachers how likely no easy answers for how to teach them. paradoxically simpler and more complex their students would be to use various Overall, 80 percent of teachers said they for students and everyone. It is so easy resources, 94 percent said their students spend class time discussing how to assess to find basic information on nearly any would be “very likely” to turn to Google the reliability of online information, though subject. However, there is enormous or another search engine, with Wikipedia fewer spend time helping students improve difficulty finding signals amid all the close behind at 75 percent (as shown in their search queries (57 percent) or discuss noise.” Figure 2). Less than one in fi ve teachers how search engines work (35 percent). At the heart of these teachers’ said they expected their students to turn to Many teachers in our focus groups ambivalence is the unmediated nature textbooks (18 percent), online databases said they relied on their school’s English of the Internet. Instead of searching for (17 percent), or research librarians department to help students develop sources within a pre-approved set of (16 percent). research skills, with some saying they resources, such as at a school library, or Most of the AP and NWP teachers did not feel qualifi ed to teach many skills otherwise limited to the scope of published surveyed strongly agreed that “search themselves. But other teachers said that books and journals. This, teachers say, can engines have conditioned students to digital research skills need to be taught by be a blessing and a curse. As one NWP expect to be able to fi nd information all teachers across the curriculum—and that teacher said in a focus group, “availability quickly and easily.” One instructor said, library staff can be a key part of that process. and access to quality resources has never “It kills me to see students typing in whole Teachers, pressed for time, employ been greater, but it requires even more questions [such as] ‘What does it mean to a variety of methods, such as requiring a skill in fi ltering and sorting. This is an area leave a digital footprint on today’s society?’ mix of offl ine and online sources. Some

Winter 2014 Young Adult Library Services YALS 35 Teens and Tech

One NWP teacher felt that today’s Figure 3. “Essential” skills for students, according to teachers. students are operating in a more complex Among Advanced Placement and National Writing Project teachers surveyed, the environment than previous generations— percentage of teachers who feel each of the following skills is “essential” for their and need more help: “I would say that our students to be successful in life. students are asked to digest much more Working with audio, video or graphic content information than I ever was. That’s got to be Presenting themselves effectively in online social networking sites tough. It’s tough to know which information Finding information quickly to read deeply, which site will off er credible Communicating ideas in creative, engaging or interesting ways Understanding privacy issues surrounding digital and online content sources . . . If anything, schools are slower to Behaving responsibly online respond to the needs of students now than Writing effectively they were in the past. Maybe, this is why it Judging the quality of information is perceived that today’s students are lagging 0204060 80 100 Essential behind those of the past.” Another teacher added, “If as educators, Source: The Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project Online Survey of Teachers, March 7 to April 23, 2012, n=2,462 middle and high school teachers. More: pewinternet.org we do not accept the responsibility to teach our students the skills to navigate messages, information, multiple identities, and other teachers ban particular sources, such as visual literacy and we explore doctored demands that these technologies place on our Wikipedia, or teach students to use sites images, etc. I love pulling an image of youth, future generations will certainly fail to with “trustworthy” domains such as .gov, a website that states that something meet the current demands.” .org, or.edu. happened to their favorite celebrity. They We have heard these same concerns In another approach, some teachers debate what is true and how to fi nd the echoed by public library staff , many of said they require students to conduct truth.” whom are calling on libraries to help their online research using only particular Several public library staff members patrons master the new tools for navigating sites; nine in 10 teachers in our survey we spoke with in a separate piece of all types of information. “Public libraries said they direct their students to specifi c research echoed many of these fi ndings, should be about educating the public to online resources that they feel are most saying they often encountered confusion survive in today’s world,” one staff member appropriate for a particular assignment. among both high school and college wrote. “That involves not only the basic An instructor at a College Board school students over how to conduct research literacy that comes with books, but also told us that due to time constraints, online. In some cases, students who were a digital literacy to interact with the “rather than risk them going out and required to use non-Internet sources government and economy as it becomes fi nding the wrong information ... you give were unsure whether journal articles increasingly paperless.” them fi ve sources and you say, ‘These are accessed via an online databases would There seems to be a clear the approved sources. Do not go outside be considered an “online source” by their opportunity for libraries to help this realm.’” An AP teacher added, “The instructors. “Their teachers say, ‘No Americans of all ages navigate these biggest challenge in any AP class in my Internet resources. You can’t use the complex digital resources. Adults experience is time. The volume and depth Internet,’” one librarian said in a focus already go to the Internet to help answer of the material is so extensive that fi nding group. “You want to say, ‘But this isn’t important or sensitive questions. 72 the time to teach eff ective research is really the Internet. It’s not what your percent of online adults have looked very diffi cult.” teacher meant’”7 (See Figure 3). online for health information within the Some teachers searched for ways Overall, 91 percent of teachers agreed past year, and 77 percent of them say they to make the process more relevant to that being able to judge the quality of began their last session at a search engine students’ interests. “I fi nd fun material information is an “essential” skill in order (compared with 13 percent who say they and they have to determine if it is credible for students to succeed in the future. began at a site that specializes in health or not and why. I pull material from Beyond students’ need to do research for information such as WebMD).8 Like various websites, to tabloids, to Internet school or work, teachers cited a variety of teens, they generally feel confi dent with e-mail hoaxes, to credible sources,” one areas where “digital literacy” of all sorts will their abilities, with 91 percent of search NWP teacher said. “I also teach this with be increasingly important. engine users saying they always or most

36 YALS Young Adult Library Services Winter 2014 Zickuhr

of the time fi nd the information they are References Pew Research Center’s Internet Project, seeking when they use search engines.9 1. Mary Madden et al., “Teens and October 23, 2012. http://libraries. Many librarians told us that they Technology 2013,” Pew Research Center’s pewinternet.org/2012/10/23/younger- wished more patrons knew about libraries’ Internet Project, March 13, 2013. http:// americans-reading-and-library-habits/. databases and what they are capable pewInternet.org/Reports/2013/Teens- 6. Kristen Purcell et al., “How Teens Do of. “I don’t think we make use of our and-Tech.aspx. Research in the Digital World,” Pew subscription databases nearly as much as 2. Ibid. Research Center’s Internet Project, we could,” one wrote. “Instead of seeing 3. Kathryn Zickuhr, Lee Rainie, and Kristen November 1, 2012. http://pewinternet. ourselves as diminishing in importance Purcell, “Younger Americans’ Library Habits org/Reports/2012/Student-Research.aspx. because of the ‘digital divide,’ we should and Expectations,” Pew Research Center’s 7. Zickuhr, “Younger Americans’ Library see ourselves as important links to help Internet Project, June 25, 2013. http:// Habits.” patrons navigate the overwhelming sources libraries.pewinternet.org/2013/06/25/ 8. Susannah Fox and Maeve Duggan, of information out there.” younger-americans-library-services/. “Health Online 2013,” Pew Research “We should be guides,” one 4. Mary Madden, “Teens Haven’t Center’s Internet Project, January librarian wrote. “If you are going into the Abandoned Facebook (Yet),” Pew 15, 2013. http://pewinternet.org/ information jungle of the World Wide Research Center’s Internet Project, Reports/2013/Health-online.aspx. Web and publications and databases and August 15, 2013. http://www. 9. Kristen Purcell, Joanna Brenner, and Lee online books today, you need a guide. pewinternet.org/Commentary/2013/ Rainie, “Search Engine Use 2012,” Pew Someone who is familiar with the territory August/Teens-Havent-Abandoned- Research Center’s Internet Project, March who can point you to the information and Facebook-Yet.aspx. 9, 2012. http://www.pewinternet.org/ resources you seek. You need a guide; you 5. Kathryn Zickuhr et al., “Younger Reports/2012/Search-Engine-Use-2012. need a librarian.” YALS Americans’ Reading and Library Habits,” aspx.

Guidelines for Authors

Young Adult Library Services is the offi cial publication of the Young relating to teen services and spotlights signifi cant activities and Adult Library Services Association, a division of the American programs of the division. Library Association. Young Adult Library Services is a vehicle for For submission and author guidelines, please visit http:// continuing education of librarians working with young adults (ages yalsa.ala.org/yals and click on “Submissions.” twelve through eighteen) that showcases current research and practice Index to Advertisers

ALA Legacy Society ...... Cover 2 Orca Book Publishers ...... 15 ALSC ...... 5 Peachtree Publishers ...... 27 Blink ...... 8 Tor/Forge Books ...... 19 Disney-Hyperion Books ...... Cover 4 YALSA Training Kits ...... Cover 3

Winter 2014 Young Adult Library Services YALS 37 the YALSA update ASSOCIATION NEWS

Find the latest YALSA news every Friday at the YALSA Blog, http://yalsa.ala.org/blog.

2014 YA Literature to nonmembers. However, nonmembers So check it out at www.ala.org/yalsa/ Symposium—New can continue to purchase archived sessions best! Dates! for $19. For more information, visit www. ue to a change in availability at the ala.org/yalsa/webinars. If you are not hotel, YALSA has moved the dates of receiving YALSA’s weekly e-news? Please “The Future of Library Dthe 2014 YA Literature Symposium. contact Letitia Smith at [email protected] or Services for and with The new dates are Nov. 14–16, 2014. 312.280.4390. Teens: A Call to Action” Please note that the location stays the same, As part of the year-long National Forum the Hyatt Regency in Austin, TX. We do on Libraries and Teens eff ort, YALSA has apologize for any inconvenience, and as a Promote the Best of the released a report, “The Future of Library gesture of goodwill we have re-negotiated our Best @ your library Services for and with Teens: A Call to contract with the hotel so that the nightly As this issue mails, YALSA will be Action.” The report provides direction on room rate is reduced from $129 to $124, all announcing its award winners at how libraries need to adapt and change to attendees will get a 50% parking discount the Youth Media Awards at ALA’s meet the needs of 21st century teens. Visit and there will be free Internet access in the Midwinter Meeting in Philadelphia. The www.ala.org/yaforum to download the meeting and hotel rooms. To learn more announcement will take place Jan. 27. report and executive summary today. about the Symposium, please visit www. In addition, YALSA will announce its With funding from a 2012 grant ala.org/yalitsymposium. The preliminary selected book and media lists for 2014. awarded by the Institute of Museum and program will be posted on that site by Feb. Beginning in February, visit www.ala. Library Services (IMLS), the National 1st. We hope to see you in Austin for this org/yalsa/best to fi nd downloadable tools Forum on Libraries and Teens provided great event! to promote winners at your library, part an opportunity for the library community of YALSA’s Best of the Best! You’ll be to join other youth-development able to download customizable bookmarks organizations to engage in a conversation Announcing Free featuring the winners of the 2014 Alex, about how the library community can E-Learning for YALSA Edwards, Morris, Nonfi ction, Odyssey, better meet the needs of adolescents in a Members! and Printz Awards. We’ll also off er press time of diminishing resources and rapid Beginning Jan. 1, 2014, all live webinars releases, which you can customize and demographic and technological change. from YALSA are now a members’ only send to local publications to let teens know The report is a call to action for benefi t. That means all personal members that award winners are available at your the library community. It provides of YALSA can sign up for these webinars library. You can also download logos to use recommendations on how libraries must and take them at no cost. For easy webinar on your website or in marketing materials address challenges and re-envision their access, each month we’ll include a link to in your library, spine labels to apply to teen services in order to meet the needs a registration page in the YALSA e-news. titles that appear in the Best of the Best, of their individual communities and There are 100 spots in each live webinar and other tools to promote the awards, to collectively ensure that the nation’s that are assigned on a fi rst come fi rst serve as well as the Amazing Audiobooks for 40+ million teens develop the skills basis. Every member will be able to access Young Adults, Best Fiction for Young they need to be productive citizens. the recording of the webinars in the For Adults, Fabulous Films for Young Adults, By acting on this call, the library Members Only section of the YALSA web Great Graphic Novels for Teens, Popular community can work within their own site within 48 hours of the live session. Paperbacks for Young Adults, and Quick local communities to create the kind of Live webinars will no longer be available Picks for Reluctant Young Adult Readers. spaces, services, and opportunities that

38 YALS Young Adult Library Services Winter 2014 today’s teens need in order to succeed in Official 2013 Teens’ Top moving YALSA forward and have a school and in life. Ten titles announced great time by joining one of our strategic As the report points out, now is YALSA has announced the offi cial 2013 committees! President-Elect Chris the time for public and school libraries Teens’ Top Ten titles. Voting for the 2013 Shoemaker will be appointing committee to join with other key stakeholders and Teens’ Top Ten took place from Aug. 15 members to 2014–2016 strategic committees take action to help address the issues that through Teen Read Week, Oct. 13–19, that help the association advance its mission negatively impact teens, and ultimately the with more than 32,000 votes cast. This year, and the profession. Interested in being more future of the nation. Today’s 40+ million there were 28 nominees that competed for involved? Read on to fi nd out how. adolescents face an increasing array of social the “top ten” list. The offi cial 2013 Teens’ issues, barriers, and challenges that many of Top Ten titles can be found below and are them are unable to overcome on their own. also featured in a video announcement at A Guide to Strategic With nearly 7,000 teens dropping out of http://www.ala.org/yalsa/reads4teens/. Committees high school per day, the nation is in danger The offi cial 2013 Teens’ Top Ten YALSA has two types of committees: of losing an entire generation, which in turn titles are as follows: selection committees, which select specifi c will lead to a shortage of skilled workers library materials or choose YALSA’s and engaged citizens. 1. “Code Name Verity” by Elizabeth awards and strategic committees “The Future of Library Services Wein (Disney/Hyperion) (previously called process committees), for and with Teens: A Call to Action” 2. “The False Prince” by Jennifer A. which help carry out the work of the was written and edited for YALSA by Nielsen (Scholastic/Scholastic Press) association. Strategic committees include: Linda W. Braun, Maureen L. Hartman, 3. “Insurgent” by Veronica Roth Sandra Hughes-Hassell, and Kafi (Harper Collins/Katherine Tegen JURIES Kumasi with contributions from Beth Books) · Books for Teens Jury Yoke. It was adopted by the YALSA 4. “Pushing the Limits” by Katie · BWI/YALSA Collection Board of Directors on December 16, McGarry (Harlequin Teen) Development Grant Jury 2013. 5. “Poison Princess” by Kresley Cole · Conference Travel Scholarships Jury To learn more about the project visit (Simon & Schuster) · Frances Henne/VOYA/YALSA www.ala.org/yaforum. 6. “The Raven Boys” by Maggie Research Grant Jury Stiefvater (Scholastic/Scholastic · Great Books Giveaway Jury Press) · MAE Award for Best Literature Join YALSA at ALA 7. “Crewel” by Gennifer Albin Program for Teens Jury Annual Conference! (Macmillan/Farrar Straus Giroux) · Volunteers of the Year Award Jury 8. “Every Day” by David Levithan · Writing Award Jury (Random House/Alfred A. Knopf) Early bird registration ends 9. “Kill Me Softly” by Sarah Cross BOARDS March 3rd. (Egmont) · Continuing Education Advisory YALSA has big plans for Annual 2014— 10. “Butter” by Erin Jade Lange Board be part of the action in Las Vegas this (Bloomsbury) · JRLYA Advisory Board summer, June 26–July 1. · Publications Advisory Board There are plenty of interesting programs The Teens’ Top Ten is a “teen choice” · The Hub Advisory Board and ticketed events to attend, including Teen list, with teens nominating and choosing · Website Advisory Board Spaces 201: What’s Next for Teen Spaces in their favorite books of the previous year. · YALS Editorial Advisory Board Libraries, the Odyssey Award Presentation Nominators are members of teen book · YALSAblog Advisory Board and Program, Energizing Teen Creativity groups in 16 school and public libraries by Letting Go, Sci Fi for Librarians Who around the country. Nominations are posted COMMITTEES & TASKFORCES Don’t Like Sci Fi, YA Author Coff ee Klatch, on Celebrate Teen Literature Day during · Division and Membership Promotion and Dynamic Duos: Collaboration between National Library Week and teens across the Committee School and Public Library Systems. For country vote on their favorite titles between · Financial Advancement Committee more detailed information on all YALSA has August and October. For more information · Joint School/Public Library to off er at Annual 2014, visit www.ala.org/ about the Teens’ Top Ten, please visit Cooperation Committee yalsa/events. http://www.ala.org/yalsa/teens-top-ten. · Legislation Committee Early bird registration ends March · Annual Conference Marketing & 3rd. Find more details about registration Local Arrangements Taskforce and housing at the ALA Annual Web site, Have Fun While Building (seeking members in the San www.alaannual.org. For the latest details on Your Professional Skills! Francisco area) YALSA’s Annual schedule, visit the YALSA Update your skills, get leadership and · Organization and Bylaws Committee Events page at www.ala.org/yalsa/events. networking opportunities, be a part of · Research Committee

Winter 2014 Young Adult Library Services YALS 39 · Teen Read Week Committee on which you’d most like to serve. If you YALSA Announces · Teen Tech Week Committee don’t indicate a few that you’re particularly Dolly Goyal as its 2014 · Teens’ Top Ten Committee interested in, it is very diffi cult for the Emerging Leader · Awards and Lists Marketing president-elect to fi nd the best fi t for you. YALSA has chosen Dolly Goyal as Taskforce Forms are only kept on fi le for one year, its 2014 Emerging Leader. Goyal · Mentoring Taskforce so it’s important that you fi ll one out each will receive funding to attend ALA’s · National Guidelines Oversight year that you would like to serve on a Midwinter Meeting and Annual Committee committee or jury. Conference in 2014. YALSA’s · Summer Reading & Learning participation in the Emerging Leaders Taskforce program is funded through the Friends Timeline of YALSA (FOY), which since 2005 Applications will be accepted through has provided more than $100,000 in What to Know Before March 1st, and once submitted you member awards, grants, stipends and You Volunteer should look for an email confirmation scholarships. Before you volunteer to serve on a from YALSA. Appointments will be Goyal is a teen services librarian at committee, advisory board or jury, made by the President-Elect in March the San Mateo County Library—Belmont you’ll want to learn what the group does and April 2014. Please do not expect Library in California. In addition to and what your responsibilities will be. to hear from Chris Shoemaker before her YALSA/ALA members, Goyal You should contact the chair directly, March. For updates on the appointments is a member of the California Library explain that you’re interested in serving process, check the YALSAblog. If Association, REFORMA and the Bay and then ask questions about what your appointed, your term begins July 1, Area Young Adult Librarians. involvement will entail. Names and 2014. The ALA has selected 56 people to contact information for all the chairs participate in its 2014 class of Emerging are available at www.ala.org/yalsa/ Leaders. The program is designed to aboutyalsa/yalsaalacontacts. The Fine Print enable library staff and information On the YALSA website you’ll All of YALSA’s strategic committees are workers to participate in project planning also find information about each virtual appointments, meaning you do not workgroups; network with peers; gain an of the group’s functions, size, and need to attend the Annual Conference inside look into ALA structure and have more. Start your research at www. or Midwinter Meeting to serve on a an opportunity to serve the profession ala.org/yalsa/workingwithyalsa/ committee. Appointments are two-year in a leadership capacity early in their yalsacommittee. Lastly, be sure to read terms for advisory boards and committees, careers. through YALSA’s Handbook, especially and one year terms for juries. Some The program kicks off with a day- the sections that list responsibilities groups are very popular and may receive long session during the 2014 Midwinter for committee members. It’s online dozens of volunteer forms for just two or Meeting in Philadelphia, and includes at www.ala.org/yalsa/aboutyalsa/ three available spots. Your membership orientation and training. The program yalsahandbook. in YALSA must be current in order for will then continue in an online learning you to be eligible to serve on a committee and networking environment for six or jury. months, culminating with a poster session Complete the Volunteer Questions? Please contact Chris with the Emerging Leaders showcasing Form Shoemaker, YALSA’s President-Elect, the results of their project planning work To be considered for any committee at [email protected] or YALSA’s at Annual Conference in Las Vegas. or jury, you need to fi ll out a volunteer Membership Coordinator, Letitia Smith, Participants commit to taking part in all form. It is available online (go to www. at [email protected]. aspects of the program and may have an ala.org/yalsa/aboutyalsa/yalsahandbook For other ways to build your opportunity to serve on an ALA, division, and choose the “Committee Volunteer professional skills and/or get more chapter, round table or affi liate committee Form”). When you fi ll out a form, please involved in YALSA, please visit www.ala. or workgroup upon completion of be sure to include the name of the groups org/yalsa/getinvolved/getinvolved. program. YALS

40 YALS Young Adult Library Services Winter 2014 Young Adults Deserve the Best Understanding Teen Behavior for a Positive Library Experience & Strengthening Teen Services through Technology Instructional Kits Now Available!

YALSA’s training kits take the work out of putting on a workshop! Each kit provides ready-to-use training materials, including PowerPoint presentations, a script and step-by-step group activities. Trainers can adapt them for their audience, or use as-is. Each kit is broken into several modules, that can work as stand-alone mini-sessions, or they can be presented together as a full day of training. The Understanding Teen Behavior for a Positive Library Experience kit focuses on helping all library workers gain the knowledge and skills they need to have successful interactions with teen patrons. The Teens and Technology kit provides a wealth of information to help library workers keep up to date on how best to integrate technology into programs and services. Visit www.ala.org/yalsa/young-adults-deserve-best to view free demos, place your order or learn more!

CCost: $175 for digital download; $199 for paper editione with CD containing PowerPoint presentations ((binder-ready, three-hole punched and tabbed). For 20%20 off orders of 25 or more, mention code YUTB12 for Understanding Teen Behavior and code YTEC12 for Strengthening Teen Services through Technology.

Visit www.alastore.org or call (866) 746-7252 to purchase yours today. INTERPLANETARY RELATIONS HAVE NEVER BEEN THIS HOT     s

SEQUELS YOU’VE BEEN WAITING FOR!     s     s     s     s

un-requiredreading.com