Real-World Teen Services by Jennifer Velasquez (Bookzcity)

Further Details About This Book:

A few years ago, I did a presentation at the ALA Annual Conference about
teens’ mobile technology usage patterns and their implications for
libraries. It was specific, and—I believed—thought-provoking stuff.
When the allotted question period arrived, librarians from around the
country began to ask basic questions about basic teen library services
and situations. It wasn’t the first time that the topic at hand was pushed
aside by a hunger to talk about “the basics.”
When I began my journey as a teen services librarian in the late
1990s, I was in seemingly uncharted waters. My first task was to cobble
together “teen services” out of good intentions and dust.

I found few resources beyond lists of YA fiction books and litanies of
“cool” teen programming ideas. By trial, error (read: epic failures), and
instinct, things came together. Some twenty years later, I’m left with
one unshakable belief about teen library services: always trust teens.
Always. Relevance and success mean being truly open to teens’ ideas
and desires about their library experience. It’s not that your ideas are
bad—they are just your ideas and this isn’t about you or your ideas or
what you think a library should be. This is about teens—as partners,
producers, and participants.