Some of these kids have the weight of the world on their shoulders: Rochelle could be the first African-American female master in the history of chess; Alexis could be the first member of his family to go to college; and, at 11 years old, Justus is already a chess wunderkind—and that’s just a few of the remarkable players featured in the film.

School Library Journal caught up with first-time director Katie Dellamaggiore—who lives with her husband in Williamsburg, Brooklyn—for an illuminating chat about her directorial debut, chess, education, filmmaking, and making a difference.

Where did you get the idea to make Brooklyn Castle?
I found the story through an article I read in the New York Times in the spring of 2007. This article was about Shawn Martinez at Edward R. Murrow High School and the article was all about him and how they had the best chess team in the nation.

I also read The Kings of New York by Michael Weinreb. The hook for me was that I was from Brooklyn and I had no idea that we were known for public school chess teams. It didn’t seem like a likely situation. I was wrong of course. [laughs] One small chapter was about I.S. 318. So I talked to Michael and he was the one who suggested that it would be a good documentary: “You should check it out.” And so I did.

As soon as I met these kids, I knew that they would make for amazing characters in a documentary. The chess team was treated almost as athletes. It broke a lot of stereotypes. I was like, “Wow. This story is unexpected in so many ways.” I thought that if I found it unexpected and moving—and I’m from this neighborhood—others would, too.

When did you begin filming Brooklyn Castle? When did you wrap up?
We started shooting officially in April 2009. Then from there, we decided we would shoot for an entire school year, wrapping in June 2010. We spent two years editing on and off until it premiered in 2012.

Chess Champion Alexis Paredes at Home Photo Courtesy of PDA

Given how much time you were able to observe these kids, why do you think the chess players of I.S. 318 are so successful?
I think it’s a couple of things that make them so successful. A combination of really dedicated staff. [Assistant Principal] John [Galvin] and [chess teacher] Elizabeth [Spiegel] are really committed. Elizabeth gets them excited and John figures out ways to make it possible. The culture of the school in general is a really big part of it. The principal [Fred Rubino], who sadly passed away, really built a culture of activity.

I think kids at that age really respond to that. It gets them excited to go to school. And the kids themselves they work really hard. I mean, chess is not one of those skills you’re just born with. You have to put a lot of time and effort into it. These kids are motivated to do well. The parents in the film were so supportive of the kids and I think that is a big part of the equation. There really is no secret.  Elizabeth just has an unparalleled enthusiasm for chess and kids just really respond to teachers like that.

Do you have a favorite memory from filming?
There’s a lot of stuff that didn’t make the film. We traveled with the team a lot and so the kids are on field trips and there’s really funny shots with them doing silly stuff in the hallways, eating cereal from the box. And I remember being like, “Wow, I forgot that this was what it was like in junior high school.” These milestones, like we all had when we were younger.

What was your hardest or most difficult moment?
The most difficult part was editing the movie; we had so much footage. Like 400 hours of footage. It’s hard figuring out how to cut it down. It’s our first film and we thought it was ready much sooner than it actually was. We eventually found the movie, but that was the hardest part: figuring out a way to interweave it all so it’s cohesive.

Chess comes to signify something so much larger than a game in these kids’ lives. What do you think that is?
I think you can replace chess with any kind of positive enriching activity with any kid at that age. It’s an opportunity for these kids. For Patrick to over come his ADHD, for Rochelle to get a scholarship, for Alexis to go to college…it’s about opening up a kid’s world and that’s what chess did. But it doesn’t have to be chess as long as our public schools are giving kids opportunities like that where they can dream beyond their immediate world.

Do you keep in touch with the kids?
Certainly—especially in the last few months because of screenings. We’ve been seeing a lot of one another lately and will continue to. We’re in one another’s’ lives for the long run.

What kind of feedback have you received?
The immediate community here has really embraced the film. The school really embraced the film. We had some fundraisers for them; I think we’ve raised $35,000. That’s direct donations as a result of the film. Nationally, in terms of critical review, it’s crazy. On Rotten Tomatoes, it’s one of the top films in terms of critics; so that’s awesome. It’s not just a Brooklyn story. It’s just nice to know that the film is a universal story. That makes me really happy.

Reacting to the drastic budget cuts his school faces, Galvin says, “If you believe in public education, if you believe in kids, you’ve got to fight for it.” What can people who want to make sure that programs like the chess club at I.S. 318 continue do to help?
On a national level, there’s an organization like the Afterschool Alliance, they’re a partner of ours, and they’re fighting every day. On our website, we have action fights that they’ve shared with us. You can go to take action and see what the latest push is.

In your own community you can get involved as a parent in PTA and local councils.

It’s also about finding resources in other ways. If you’re an adult that has a skill, like chess, you can donate your time. You need to light the fire sometimes.

If people want to donate to the I.S. 318 chess team, you can do that through our website. Pobo has a petition that people can sign. The more we can get the word out about the film, I think the more it energizes people to see the value of programs like this. I think the movie is a great way for schools to be reminded of what their schools are really good at. It’s also nice for people to be reminded that there are really good things happening at public schools.

On February 5, Brooklyn Castle will be available on digital platforms such as iTunes and on-demand video. Communities can request screenings at their local theaters through Tugg.com. Libraries, nonprofits, and schools that are interested in showing the film can find more information on the website or by emailing info@brooklyncastle.com.

Plush gorilla Ivan visits his book at the Indianapolis Public Library. Photo credit: John Schumacher.

“You know what’s interesting? I’m sort of a Luddite about technology, but I embraced Twitter this year,” Applegate tells SLJ, noting that immediately after the YMA announcements, she viewed “a scary amount of tweets” discussing her win.

It’s this interactive community of online librarian fans, both independent bloggers and Tweeters, that helped boost Ivan’s visibility, she says. “It’s helped tremendously.”

Leading the charge for The One and Only Ivan has been the Nerdy Book Club as well as popular book blogger and K–5 librarian John Schumacher, who has “a huge online presence,” Applegate says.

Once Applegate’s Newbery win was announced, “My students clapped and clapped and clapped. Incredible,” Schumacher tells SLJ. “Ivan will never be forgotten.”

Applegate says she was honored when she learned that Schumacher chose Ivan as the inspiration for his book-character-on-vacation trip in 2012, an annual event that he blogs about for the kids back home. “Every year he takes a plush character from a kid’s book around on adventures, and this year he selected Ivan!” Applegate says. “He took him to meet the actual Ivan at Zoo Atlanta. John was able to go in with a couple of friends and have Ivan sign his book with a green thumbprint. Isn’t that cool?”

(“You have no idea how hard it is to find a T-shirt for a stuffed gorilla,” Applegate adds.)

Looking ahead, Applegate says she hopes her Newbery recognition means even more children will now learn the story about the real silverback gorilla named Ivan. “It’s a chance to really connect with kids and that’s really wonderful. I’m really gratified,” she tells SLJ. “I wish I had been in Seattle. But it makes me very happy that this story could make it into the world in some way.”

Meanwhile, relative newcomer to kid lit Jon Klassen says he was surprised to learn, just in the past few years since the publication of his picture book I Want My Hat Back (Candlewick, 2011), how determined librarians are in their efforts to get a book out to readers. “It’s a big deal,” he tells SLJ.

So far, the illustrator, who began his career in animation, has been relying on children’s book collaborator Mac Barnett—who was also named, along with Klassen, winner of a Caldecott Honor this week for Extra Yarn (HarperCollins)—to help guide him through this “crazy” new world, he says.

“Librarians are very important!” Klassen adds. “It’s not a marketplace angle; librarians are looking for what’s best for kids, so they have different criteria. The opinions that they give out are really thought through. They’re very passionate.” Author events have been eye-opening in this regard, he tells SLJ. “(Librarians) are very organized and they’re quick and super sharp—and smarter than you.”

And as it turns out, the experience of being an author is much more expansive—and involves much more community-building in these areas—than he originally expected.

“I like making the books, but if you get lucky with one, you end up talking about it more than you thought you would,” he tells SLJ. “There’s a cycle that I’m slowly learning about.” However, Klassen says, “Being busy following these books around? That’s the best problem to have in the world.”

I have (much more successfully) done this at every other juncture in my life, including the (final) family move to Maryland, three colleges, and a dozen jobs. I took what I liked about myself and refined the details. As for the not-so-likable elements, I trashed them. I knew there was a better me just waiting to be born. With our new library opening in less than two months and my transfer to the new building coming next week, once again I’m in a time of transition and I’m redefining who I am as a teen librarian, a peer, a supervisor, an advocate, and a friend.

Many of the responsibilities I have at my current library are following me to the Gum Spring Library. My biggest responsibility is that of page supervisor. I took over that role in December 2011, when the person who’d been supervising the four pages had to take an emergency leave. My own supervisor helped me ajust to my new role, though many of the job’s nuances I learned as time progressed. To help out my successor, I’ve created a document that describes the duties (official and unofficial) of a page supervisor. I also used this opportunity to reflect upon what I’ve learned. In effect, I gave myself a performance assessment. I’ve already begun working on a new document on the training and supervision of the pages who will arrive in February.

Much of what I’ve learned while supervising pages transfers neatly into my role as a teen volunteer coordinator. My goal is to teach our young volunteers about the library, encourage them to work and play there, and give them a solid opportunity that builds both their character and their resume. I know I let some of our teen volunteers fall through the cracks in my old branch’s very busy volunteer program. Instead of giving each of them the personalized attention they deserved, I let a few simply sign in, do their tasks, and then leave. Even if that was the kind of experience they’d expected, it wasn’t what they deserved. Teen volunteers should be nurtured to view the library as a “third place”: a place to keep organized, fun, and safe, and mostly importantly, to be proud of. As I train my replacement and the new Gum Spring teen volunteers, I’ll be sure to keep the number of volunteers at a manageable level. That way, my peers and I in the Teen Center can create meaningful relationships with them, and instill a sense of responsibility and of place in them.

As I sit at my desk, contemplating which documents, folders, and ARCs to get rid of and which to take to my new library, I’m doing the same thing with my role as a teen librarian. We are rarely given an opportunity to reinvent ourselves, but when we are, we owe it to ourselves and to those we work with to take a moment to reflect on ways that we can improve.

Gum Spring opening day collection

Fresh Paint charts the development of teen services at a new public library in an underserved community. Gum Spring Library will be Loudoun County’s (VA) eighth branch and will serve more than 100,000 residents. It’s one of the county’s largest public-private partnerships.

Nashville Mayor Karl Dean came up with the idea for the partnership in 2008 as he looked for ways to leverage the city’s resources. “Through this partnership, I believe we can create world-class libraries in our schools,” said Dean said at the time. Through Limitless Libraries, NPL has helped modernize and expand school collections by weeding out outdated books and by using the city’s purchasing power to efficiently acquire new material. Additionally, students and teachers have near-instantaneous access to NPL’s entire collection, plus several local university collections. School-issued student IDs are used as city library cards.

Strong foundation for a bright future

Because of Limitless Libraries, all of Nashville’s high school collections are up to the state standard of nine items per student with audiovisual resources in every school and key purchases made, including ebooks and the online resource Rosen’s Teen Health and Wellness. Easier than ever before, students and teachers can access all of NPL’s databases. In addition, about 200 ereaders were purchased, so every school librarian can check them out to students. School librarians feel empowered by the added attention that their programs are receiving. Nashville students can now tap into the city’s collection of more than 1.5 million items, which can be delivered straight to their schools. During the 2011–2012 school year, more than 97,000 items were sent to Metro Nashville Schools by courier. Even more encouraging, 25,000 students registered as NPL’s patrons, and 15,000 of them were first-time public library users.

Nashville’s 74 elementary schools were added to the program this school year, making Limitless Libraries available in all 128 of the city’s traditional schools. There are plans to create hardy collections of audiovisual and English learner materials for elementary school students, and NPL recently teamed up with Follett to create a 2,500-item ebook collection. Additionally, the city is funding a longitudinal study of the program, in which the library will be working with education researcher Keith Curry Lance and his partners at RSL Research Group.

The beginning stages

From the get-go, a partnership seemed like a win-win situation. NPL already had an efficient, centralized collection development and procurement system, and librarians began identifying ways to work this system into high school libraries. It was clear that improvements to school libraries could easily be made by sharing resources and providing students with access to more learning materials.

Nashville Mayor Karl Dean

As a first step, a steering committee was convened, I was appointed to head up the project by Donna Nicely, who at the time was NPL’s director. We met with administrators from the public library, Nashville’s Metro Schools, and the mayor’s office. There’s no denying that the partnership demanded flexibility from every entity as each area would be required to do things differently. NPL and the school libraries were accustomed to operating in silos. But everyone involved agreed on the end goal: to provide students with the best possible library experience with ample selection choices.

Concerns in the implementation process included public librarians who worried about whether staffing levels could handle the additional responsibilities of such a program. At the same time, high school librarians expressed concerns over being “taken over.” With a clear vision, strong leadership, and a collaborative mindset, the groups worked together to overcome these obstacles. NPL has received additional staffing, and high school librarians see nothing but benefits from the partnership.

Next steps

As a next step, high school media specialists were recruited for a pilot program. During meetings hosted at local schools, school librarians had the chance to express needs and concerns. Everyone worked together to find solutions for many valid concerns, including how the school library collections would be modernized. As an example of that collaborative spirit, both NPL and school library personnel worked together to weed outdated books off shelves. They manually pulled the books, boxed up the discarded titles, and, together, scrubbed the empty shelves. In meetings attended by both school and public librarians, they agreed not a single book would be purchased unless everyone agreed.

To help with the process, Karen Lowe was hired as a consultant to help create guidelines for the weeding and purchasing decisions. Lowe is a veteran school library media coordinator, a college instructor, and the author of the definitive article on collection assessment, “Resource Alignment: Providing Curriculum Support in the School Library Media Center” (Knowledge Quest, November­–December 2001).

In the second semester of the 2009–2010 school year, we thoroughly assessed the school libraries’ collections. We tossed out antiquated or irrelevant titles and settled on what items to add. The city library also purchased 50 netbooks for the schools to lend to their students and teamed up with Ingram Digital to pilot 400 ebooks. Since the schools were now pooling their purchasing power, they were able to negotiate deeper discounts from vendors. There was also an increase in the number of vendors that schools did business with, and new arrangements were made for their orders to arrive processed and shelf-ready, which had never been done before. School librarians were thrilled that all that was required was to simply unpack the books and place them on the shelves.

Photo by Gary Layda

Through the roof

The first four months of the program were truly remarkable. All of the pilot’s initiatives were accomplished, and a strong relationship with the school librarians was established. By the end of the pilot program in May 2010, circulation at all high school libraries had improved. The most significant increase was at the Pearl-Cohn Entertainment Magnet High School, an inner-city school, where circulation improved by an astonishing 286 percent.

Weeded items, such as Little House on the Prairie and The Little Prince, were replaced with culturally relevant, engaging materials—many of which were in nonprint formats. Suddenly, school library collections became the hottest ticket in school. School librarians also discovered the power of audiobooks to attract students, especially reluctant readers and those who read below grade level. Audiobooks, especially Playaways, became huge hits, and school librarians have been quick to notice the difference they’ve made in many students’ lives. “One student comes in a couple of days a week with her Exceptional Ed teacher,” said a media specialist. “She does not like to read, but now she loves Playaways. She’s on her second book in three days.” And here’s what another high school librarian reported: “New seniors were faced with reading Metamorphosis. They were a bit behind. One borrowed the book on CD, the other [borrowed] the Playaway—and were they ever thankful.” Before the joint program got rolling, our school librarians never had the funds to purchase these types of resources.

School librarian Alison Maliszewski and seventh grader, Brandon Muñoz from Goodlettsville Middle School, Nashville, TN.

As a result of Limitless Libraries, many unexpected opportunities have emerged that are truly amazing. School libraries now regularly take part in public library programs, such as Teen Read Week and Food for Fines, an annual event in which patrons’ overdue fines are waived in exchange for jars of peanut butter, cans of soup, packages of pasta, and other food items that are donated to the local food bank. (Fines are reduced by one dollar for each item they contribute.) Plus, city and school librarians have started to talk more to one another, sharing valuable information about programming, reading lists, and upcoming events. In short, everyone has started to communicate more about how best to serve students.

When Lowe conducted a survey at the beginning of the first year, she found that half of the respondents were fearful or skeptical of the program. But in a similar survey conducted at the end of that school year, not a single librarian objected to it. In fact, at the end of that first year, these are the types of comments that were heard from media specialists: “NPL spent the mayor’s money so wisely and improved my collection. In fact, my circulation is up 170 percent over last year and school just started. I am thrilled.” And “I’ve been telling other librarians what a great experience it was participating in the NPL/MNPS pilot project…. [It’s] a win-win for everyone.”

Not surprisingly, librarians who have participated in the pilot program have become evangelists for Limitless Libraries, soothing the fears of their colleagues and assuring them that the school and public library are truly partners. When funding was expanded for the 2010–2011 school year to include all 16 of the city’s high schools, we immediately planned an in-service session with the additional school librarians. We devoted plenty of time to getting their input, listening to their concerns, and following through. By working in a collaborative way, we gained their trust. Students have responded favorably to the program, and circulation statistics are going through the roof.

The program has been improved every step of the way. Working with school administrators and city attorneys right before the 2010–2011 academic year began, a Memorandum of Understanding was drafted to allow schools to share student-directory and parental permission information with NPL. This allows Limitless Libraries to receive daily updates on student data to import into NPL’s Innovative Millennium system. As mentioned, students’ IDs now serve as their public library cards. City library staffers know if students have permission to use the courier service and place holds on public library items. The school courier visits the main library every day, and students with permission can pick up their public library materials at their school library. Home information is updated if it changes at school.

Kent Oliver, NPL’s director, fully embraces the vision of Limitless Libraries. “I look forward to continued growth and success of the program as we seek ways to further expand Limitless Libraries and make a literary impact on our youth.”

Limitless Libraries is truly groundbreaking, and it’s being modeled around the country. Any public school system and public library can replicate Limitless Libraries. As stated in the Limitless Library motto, which was penned by a Nashville eighth grader, “The future is in your hands, make it limitless.”

Tricia Racke Bengel is NPL’s associate director for collections and technology services. In March 2012, Library Journal (SLJ’s sister publication) named her a “Mover and Shaker” To find out more about Limitless Libraries, visit www.limitlesslibraries.org.

At the center is the Can*TEEN Trivia Wheel Library Interactive game, a new spin on the classic gaming style of multiple choice trivia questions, developed by the Carnegie Science Center. AASL, working with the Carnegie Science Center, and with support from the Motorola Foundation, will distribute Can*TEEN Trivia Wheel Library Interactive toolkits to more than 2,500 school librarians serving children ages 10 to 14.

Participating school librarians will receive a free kit for their library and will be asked to complete a follow-up survey at the end of the school year. The survey will evaluate how frequently the toolkit was checked out and how it was used in the school. More information and an opt-in form can be found on AASL’s website, and you can review clips from recent play tests, featuring two of the women who helped make the Can*TEEN Interactive, at www.canteengirl.org.

For our part, we saw a disconnect when SLJ’s public library spending survey revealed that a mere nine percent of public librarians actively collaborate with their peers in K–12. After we published the results in “It Takes Two” (May 2012, pp. 26–29), we learned about many partnerships, and we also heard from many from both school and public librarians who seemed burned out by failed outreach attempts.

Yoder and Lowry may be a rare breed, but, as is abundantly clear in our cover story, “Partners in Success” (pp. 22–28), they’re not alone. Many like-minded librarians are reaching across institutional walls and redefining their turf—and their institutions are changing, too. Considering the yawning gap between what kids need from libraries and the resources currently available to them, innovation in this area is urgent.

At first, I was inspired by the spark between two professionals that ignites a new partnership. I still am. This kind of grassroots initiative is grounded in knowing the kids, and, when it works, helps build the case for more. Now, however, I’m even more convinced that our institutions need to act with the same responsiveness and creativity.

We need more of what’s happening in Nashville. Talking with Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools’ Kathryn Bennett brought this home. I met Bennett, a library lead teacher, at Library Journal’s December 14 Design Institute at the wonderful Warrensville Heights Branch of the Cuyahoga County (OH) Public Library. It was great to see her at this public library event—after all, there’s plenty of insight into learning spaces in any good library.

Naturally, we fell into talking about Nashville’s Limitless Libraries initiative. Bennett is a big fan of the project, which, she says, wouldn’t be nearly what it is without the “Memorandum of Understanding” between the school and Nashville Public Library (NPL).

As NPL’s Tricia Racke Bengel details in her overview of how Limitless Libraries came to be, the memorandum enables the library to use information about students, with parental permission, so their student IDs serve as library cards, streamlining access to the collections. Racke Bengel, who was named a 2012 LJ Mover & Shaker for this work, describes a process that was certainly disruptive. The project keeps expanding as it enriches the lives of Nashville’s kids.

After reading cover story writer Marta Murvosh’s exploration of the state of public and/school library collaborations, I’m even more convinced of the need for us be actively reimagine how we serve our kids. And we must break down the silos that stymie that work.

Toward that end, SLJ will be giving more attention to collaboration in 2013 in an effort to forge a model to help us join together to approach challenges as a greater community. We’ll focus on these partnerships as part of the first SLJ Public Library Leadership Think Tank, currently in planning for April 5 in New York City. The daylong event aims to provide a public library companion to SLJ’s dynamic Leadership Summit, aimed at tackling school library issues. My hope is that the two events will, in a sense, ping pong off of one another to foster deeper dialog on the commonalities shared by all librarians serving kids. Collaboration will also be a theme in the upcoming Be the Change webcast series, which we bet will be the start of a robust leadership initiative.

Let’s change the world together. Happy New Year!

Rebecca T. Miller
Editor-in-Chief
rmiller@mediasourceinc.com

Marcus Lowry, teen librarian, Ramsey County (MN) Library and
Leslie Yoder, digital literacy and learning specialist, St. Paul Public Schools.
Photograph by Thomas Strand.

Last spring, when school librarian Leslie Yoder heard that young adult author Francisco X. Stork was available to visit Boys Totem Town, a residential program for incarcerated teens in St. Paul, MN, she pounced on the opportunity. Although Yoder lacked the necessary funds, she instantly knew who to turn to—her partners at Ramsey County Library.

For the last two years, Yoder, a digital literacy and learning specialist with St. Paul’s public schools, has teamed up with Ramsey’s teen librarians—and the outcome has been a win-win for both the librarians and the kids whom they serve.

Thanks to Ramsey teen librarian Marcus Lowry, who found the funds for Stork’s visit, the acclaimed writer spoke at a local high school and to dozens of Yoder’s enthusiastic students about his novel Behind the Eyes (Dutton, 2006), which deals with a reform school. “Our students don’t get to meet the people who write the books,” says Yoder.

When Lowry and fellow young adult librarian Amy Boese visit Boys Totem Town, they are weighed down with bags of books and eager to do what they do best—booktalking and spearheading a weeklong technology workshop. “It’s really energizing for us to go there,” says Boese, who also works with three other school districts. “They are always superpolite and have good questions.”

Although the Institute for Museum and Library Services (IMLS) and the American Library Association’s (ALA) Public Library Data Service Statistical Report don’t keep track of the number of joint-library projects, Yoder, Lowry, and Boese are among a small group of school and public librarians nationwide who regularly work together. Like many rewarding collaborative projects, theirs usually begin with a modest idea, in this case, offering booktalks to kids in a correctional facility. But behind every successful school and public library partnership, explains Lowry, there’s also a strong personal connection and a shared vision. “It almost always has to start with one personal connection,” he says. “It’s the one person that sees that mutual value—that we serve the same kids.”

Teaming up in Minnesota: Aaron Blechert, a media specialist at Irondale
High School, and Amy Boese, a teen librarian at Ramsey County Library,
with students in the school library.
Photograph by Thomas Strand.

It’s also sound fiscal sense for school and public libraries to pool their limited resources, says Jeffrey Roth, the New York Public Library’s vice president of strategy and finance. “We’re in an era that institutions need to look and see who they can partner with and strategically use each other’s assets,” he says.

That’s a strategy that the Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools (MNPS) and Nashville Public Library (NPL) have worked to perfection. Although sharing public library collections with public schools is fairly unusual, that didn’t stop these two creative partners from thinking outside the box. During the 2011–2012 academic year, when Nashville’s budget-strapped schools were hurting for resources, the public library reached out a helping hand and loaned the city’s 54 middle schools and high schools 97,000 items—everything from books and DVDs to CDs and Playaways to entice reluctant readers and struggling English-language learners.

As a result of the impressive partnership, which is called Limitless Libraries, Stephanie Ham, NPL’s project coordinator, says the public library’s circulation stats have soared by an unprecedented 60 percent. And on the school side, MNPS’s lead librarian, Kathleen Bennett, couldn’t be more pleased. “This model is just fantastic and the benefits are great,” says Bennett. “What the kids get is wonderful open access to lots of resources.” (For more on Nashville’s Limitless Libraries, click on this link.)

The relationship between schools and public librarians is a critical one. Even before the recent recession, few school libraries could match the buying power of a large branch or a mid-size public library system. And during these troubled economic times, school librarians and their budgets are often among the first items scratched from public school budgets. That’s a compelling reason why Wisconsin’s School District of La Crosse and the La Crosse Public Library are exploring the possibility of sharing school and public library databases. “From a fiscal perspective, we’re starting to balance our resources so we are not duplicating online services,” says Vicki Lyons, the district’s director of technology and library services.

Still, successful school and public library partnerships can be a tough act to pull off, say many librarians and educators. Some of the typical roadblocks include a lack of time, vision, or resources; difficult personalities to deal with; and a scarcity of support from higher-ups. That may explain why less than one-third of school and public libraries coordinate book and other material purchases, according to School Library Journal’s first public library spending survey (see “It Takes Two,” May 2012, ow.ly/gekWY). When it comes to homework assignments, only nine percent of public libraries work directly with schools.

The emphasis on standardized testing can also be a barrier to working together, especially when kids are pulled out of the classroom to visit a public library. If the benefits of a joint effort aren’t obvious, says Rachelle Nocito, a content specialist for the School District of Philadelphia, many teachers and principals begin to worry that these activities will negatively impact test scores. “School districts are judged on our students’ achievement,” explains Nocito, whose district is piloting a program with the Free Library of Philadelphia. “It’s really important that when we step out of our building to do anything, its purpose definitely aligns with the reading program and social studies curriculum or science curriculum.”

But that doesn’t mean that school and public libraries should hesitate to work together. Susan Ballard, president of the American Association of School Librarians, a division of ALA, encourages school and public librarians to reach out to one another and other community groups. “No one can do anything on their own anymore; it’s simply not possible,” Ballard says.

At the moment, ALA’s Interdivisional Committee on School/Public Library Cooperation is working on ways to bring media centers and public libraries together on issues such as preventing “summer slide”—when kids lose many of the reading gains made during the school year—and implementing the Common Core standards. “If you’re not collaborating, why aren’t you collaborating?” Ballard asks. “The end result improves services for kids and makes them better researchers and lifelong learners.”

Students, of course, aren’t the only ones who benefit from a collaborative program. “Great partnerships let you reach out dynamically and work with a wide variety of partners within the school and public library,” says Marge Loch-Wouters, coordinator of youth services at La Crosse Public Library. She should know. Loch-Wouters has been building partnerships with local Wisconsin schools for more than two decades. “Great partnerships don’t put you in a box,” she says.

Buffy Hamilton doesn’t need to be convinced that joint-library ventures make a world of difference. Hamilton is so bullish on them that she recently left her post at Creekview High School, in Canton, GA, where she ran an award-winning library program, and joined the Cleveland Public Library’s (CPL) staff. School and public libraries “have much more in common with their visions and goals than we might initially think,” says Hamilton, who will be CPL’s liaison with Cleveland’s public schools. “We’re working on these parallel paths, and we can find a way to interact and pool our collective resources and talents to accomplish those goals.”

The following collaborative projects are a sampling of what’s happening around the country. Each of these dynamic programs has its own distinct approach, but they all have one thing in common: they’re making a genuine difference in kids’ lives and in the communities that they serve.

Denver, CO

In 2006, when residents of the Mile High City voted to raise the sales tax to support full-day kindergarten and early childhood education, the Denver Public Library (DPL) and the Denver Public Schools (DPS) knew it was the perfect time to extend their partnership, which, at the time, primarily placed library volunteers in the classroom to read to kids. With the help of a two-year, $476,000 Library Services and Technology Act grant, the two organizations banded together, in 2007, to teach children’s librarians, media specialists, and teachers about the latest advances in early childhood education. Children’s librarians who specialized in infant and toddler brain development shared their knowledge with teachers, and educators, in turn, brought public librarians up-to-date on the workings of the adolescent brain. “It was a new way to collaborate,” says David Sanger, DPS’s director of library services. “We formed professional learning communities, and those have still continued.”

Although the grant ended in 2009, the partnership is still going strong. These days DPL, DPS, and local nonprofit groups and agencies, such as Head Start, are working together on a number of projects for children from poor families. School and public librarians are also sharing their respective approaches to improving literacy and serving the city’s many English-language learners, who make up 34 percent of Denver’s K–12 students. Both groups are also discussing how best to share their resources, including, says Sanger, how to get their catalog databases to “talk to each other.”

Their efforts haven’t gone unnoticed. Denver’s 5 By 5 Project, which was created to support early childhood development, was inspired by these school and library partnerships, says Carol Edwards, DPL’s comanager of children’s and family services. The nonprofit organization, whose goal is to make sure that young kids have at least five cultural experiences by the time they start kindergarten, provides free admission to the city’s top cultural venues, such as the Denver Botanical Gardens and the Colorado Ballet, to nearly 3,000 Head Start and Early Head Start families. Plus, the library also offers free after-school camps for children of families in need. “It’s something that wouldn’t have happened if we hadn’t been talking to each other,” says Edwards.

This month, DPL joined communities, such as Louisville and Boston, where one card serves as a student’s ID and library card. My Denver Card will also give kids free access to city parks and recreation services, and there are plans to expand its benefits to include the city’s transit system, says Jennifer Hoffman, manager of DPL’s books and borrowing. Hoffman says she anticipates issuing 30,000 cards. “We’re just trying to make it easy for a student to access us,” she says.

Portland, OR

To reach out to parents and students in east Portland, Multnomah County Library’s (MCL) Midland branch staff worked with educators at the Fir Ridge Campus (FRC), the David Douglas School District’s alternative high school. Their mission? To find teens who were eager to become library tour guides.

But these tours aren’t your average orientation sessions—especially when they’re conducted in Russian, Vietnamese, and Mandarin, the languages spoken in many of the young volunteers’ homes and neighborhoods. The aim of this innovative school-library project, says FRC’s librarian Deb Wheelbarger, is to attract parents who live in east Portland’s diverse and poor neighborhoods to bring their kids to the library and introduce them to its resources.

Student-guided tours are just one way that MCL has teamed up with its five area school districts. Another outreach program, Multnomah’s School Corps (staffed by Jackie Partch, Kate Houston, Peter Ford, and Gesse Stark, all of whom have MLIS degrees), offers local teachers curriculum support, which includes issuing them special library cards (so they can check out more books for longer periods of time), school visits to talk about research skills and library services, and “Buckets of Books,” which, as its name suggests, come brimming with books on commonly taught subjects, such as Oregon history, Pacific Northwest Native Americans, and insects and spiders, says Suzanne Myers Harold, MCL’s adult literacy coordinator. The library also brings visiting authors to local schools and works hard to bring students from the county’s high-poverty areas to theater productions and special events, including an awe-inspiring visit with the Portland Trailblazers, the city’s National Basketball Association team. “Through this collaboration with Multnomah County Library, we’re able to speak for them, and they for us,” says Wheelbarger. “I love the Multnomah County Library. It’s one of the most accessible libraries in the country.”

New York, NY

When the New York City Department of Education (NYDOE) realized there was a great way to work together with the New York Public Library (NYPL), Queens Library, and Brooklyn Public Library to get more learning resources into teachers’ and students’ hands, it couldn’t wait to get started—and MyLibraryNYC was soon launched.

Funded by a $5 million grant from Citigroup, the four-year pilot program, which gives students and teachers access to literally millions of additional materials, lets kids search their school and public libraries’ catalogs simultaneously from any computer that has Internet access. From the very start, the program, which began in 2011 with 84 schools and 50 NYPL branches, opted to take a potentially risky tact: to encourage kids to take advantage of their libraries, students would not be fined if they failed to return materials on time.

A recipe for disaster? Not at all, says NYPL’s Roth. In fact, almost 100 percent of the borrowed items have found their way back onto the library’s shelves. Best of all, students are scooping up more books. “The kids in the pilot were three times more likely to have a book checked out from their local library, and school library circulation essentially doubled,” says Roth. “The New York Public Library and the Department of Education already had a great relationship, but this has taken it to another level.”

Now in its second year, MyLibraryNYC reaches 250,000 students in 400 public schools, offering them access to 17 million books, videos, and recordings. And by 2015, the program hopes to include all 1.1 million of the city’s public school students, says Richard Hasenyager, NYDOE’s director of library services.

As part of the pilot program, NYPL will deliver books and other materials that meet the Common Core State Standards to participating schools. Groundwork is also being laid in all three public library systems to work more closely with school librarians and curriculum specialists so that their collections will support the state’s Common Core Standards.

NYPL estimates that MyLibraryNYC will cost $6 per student annually in direct and indirect costs, which include shipping the materials to schools and library branches. The public library systems pay for shipping and staff training, and the every school pays the roughly $800 annual fee charged by library resource vendor Follett for its Destiny catalog and BiblioCommons, which developed the catalog’s software and online interface. (Follett is giving those school libraries a $150 discount on Destiny.) School libraries that haven’t joined the pilot will pay $650, says Leanne Ellis, NYDOE’s coordinator of library services.

This year, the pilot added the Queens and Brooklyn public libraries and expanded to 207 school libraries that now serve 296 schools, says NYDOE. Although schools have to foot part of the bill, when you stop to consider what kids are getting in return—access to “the greatest books ever written by man,” says NYPL’s Roth—it’s a real deal.

Queens Library sees MyLibraryNYC as a launching pad to expand its librarians’ ongoing work with schools in the borough. “What can be done to help the kids, to support the teachers, to ensure kids have a strong start in reading and literacy and a place to go and their parents, too?” asks Bridget Quinn-Carey, the library’s chief operating officer. “Those are the wonderful things that libraries can do.”

Monterey High’s freshmen take advantage of computers in the Monterey Public Library teen zone as part of a joint venture between the school and library.
Photo courtesy of Monterey Public Library and Monterey High School.

Monterey, CA

To help its incoming freshman beef up their critical thinking skills and boost their tech know-how, the Monterey High School (MHS) turned to a familiar partner, the Monterey Public Library. The two teamed up to create a class called 21st Century Learning Skills. Aaron Sanders, the MHS history teacher who helped kick-start it, and Ben Gomberg, a librarian formerly with the Monterey Public Library, worked together to create the course’s project-oriented assignments, which have included creating websites that explore the coastal town’s history and comparing employment information that kids found on Craigslist with data provided by the U.S. Department of Labor. Supported by a $5,300 IMLS grant, their aim was to give 130 to 150 freshmen (out of a class of 1,100) the skills they needed to succeed in school and in life, says Sanders.

As part of the class, students made four separate visits to the public library (located just a block away), and Gomberg, in turn, made the same number of classroom visits, offering presentations on topics such as copyright and privacy, evaluating websites, and using library resources to prepare for college and careers.

How’s the new course working out? According to MHS’s principal, Marcie Plummer, students who took the class had fewer D’s and F’s, absences, and discipline issues than their nonparticipating peers. Roughly half of the kids in the class reported using the public library in their free time and about a third of them also used it to do schoolwork from other classes, says Gomberg.

Students in the pilot program have also learned how to be advocates for their own learning and how to evaluate their approaches to school so that they can improve their academic performance. “Personally as a teacher, I saw them having huge gains in that area,” Sanders says. “They were not afraid of having conversations with their teachers.”

Philadelphia, PA

How do you improve 146,090 kids’ information literacy and critical thinking skills? If you’re the School District of Philadelphia (SDP) and the Free Library of Philadelphia, you join hands to create a dynamic pilot program that pairs third-grade teachers with children’s librarians from nearby branches.

How does the program work? Six times during the last two months of the school year, instead of taking part in their school’s daily requirement of 90 minutes of reading, about 200 third graders take a short walk to their local public library, usually no more than a couple of blocks away. The purpose of the visits? To research the history of Philadelphia and their neighborhoods.

Upon returning to their classrooms, groups of three or four students dive headlong into the resources they discovered at the library and begin to create their own projects, says district content specialist Nocito. Although it’s impossible to predict what these inspired students are likely to cook up, one thing’s for sure—it’s always interesting.

Sarah Stippich, a children’s librarian at the Blanche A. Nixon/Cobbs Creek Library, remembers the day when the Free Library’s 25-foot-long, state-of-the art Techmobile visited Anderson Elementary School and its third graders were introduced to iPads. “They were digitally mapping our neighborhood,” says Stippich. “They were really into that, not only the technology part of that, but being able to look at their neighborhood and say, ‘Oh, that’s where I live.’”

Some classes combine their walks to the library with physical education, and their students strap on pedometers to count their footsteps, says Betsy Orsburn, the Free Library’s chief of the Office of Public Service Support.

Although it will take at least three years to gather enough data to evaluate the pilot, says Nocito, the initial assessments indicate that students are making connections between their schoolwork and library resources. Their teachers also reported developing moderately strong to strong informative partnerships with public librarians.

Nocito would like to improve on the instructional aspects of the pilot program. Ideally, she’d like to see a 10-week local history project that touches on different curriculum areas, such as science and language arts, and then follow up with an assessment to see if students’ gains continue on in fourth grade. “We’re under scrutiny,” she says. “Our students are going to be held accountable for their visits to the Free Library.”

The pilot program originally began in 2011, when the Free Library offered to help city schools that didn’t have a librarian or a school library, says Joe Benford, the Free Library’s chief of the Extensions Division. “It really is a way to try to cement library instruction and information literacy in the school district curriculum,” says Benford. Although more than 100 of Philadelphia’s 249 public schools have school libraries, only 46 schools have certified librarians. “The school librarians are almost nonexistent,” says Benford. “What we’re trying to do is prove this works and works as a model for the future. We just wanted to see if we could collaborate with the school district, and we have.”

Even though the pilot program appears to be working, there are limits to what it can accomplish. Stippich, who works with three third-grade teachers at Anderson Elementary School and with seven other schools and 12 child-care centers, says it’s impossible for her to offer everyone the level of service that she gives to those in the pilot program. “I can’t be the librarian for everyone,” she says. “This has just convinced me even more that they need more school librarians.”

Freelance writer Marta Murvosh is an aspiring librarian who often writes about libraries and education. You can find her at www.facebook.com/MartaMurvosh.

Applications for the 2013 Innovations in Reading Prize must be postmarked or emailed by February 20, 2013. All U.S. citizens and American companies are eligible, including nonprofit groups, technology companies, or those in the military. In addition to the prize money, winners will receive an all-expense-paid trip to New York City to attend a luncheon in their honor and invitations to NBA events, such as the National Book Awards dinner and ceremony.

This year’s slogan is Día: Diversity in Action. Día is a nationally recognized initiative that emphasizes the importance of literacy for all children from all backgrounds. Libraries can register at the Día website, where ALSC also offers a resource guide, booklist and logos for download.

The Día celebration was founded in 1996 by children’s book author Pat Mora, who proposed conceptually linking the existing El Día del Niño with literacy. The founding partner of Día is REFORMA, the National Association to Promote Library and Information Services to Latinos and the Spanish-Speaking. For more information on Día, please visit dia.ala.org.

Take a look at the video and get inspired to do the same in your high school library.

The new Gum Spring Library in Loudon County, VA, will need volunteers to shelve materials, organize the book sale area, discard old materials, prepare crafts for the children’s department, help with the Summer Reading Program, and more. In addition to these daily volunteers, we will need Opening Day volunteers, with special training, to help direct patrons around the building and wear the mascot costumes, among a myriad of other tasks. It might seem tricky to collect names and contact prospective volunteers by February 23, 2013 when we don’t have an operational building yet, but, as it turns out, the volunteers have taken care of that problem, too.

Through our library Facebook page, Friends group (FROGS), library website, and school and outreach visits, we have a list of over 65 teens interested in volunteering at the Gum Spring Library. I have received emails and calls from teens interested in helping the library. I was even approached by a Girl Scout wanting the library to be the beneficiary of her Gold Award Project. A high school librarian I met at a meeting between local educators and public library staff recently contacted me regarding the Interact Club’s interest in helping with Opening Day activities, as did a middle school parent liaison who leads a group of student leaders. This outpouring of interest is more than helpful; it is imperative to our success as a functioning library. We are fortunate to have these individuals and groups as future volunteers. Now that we have an ever-growing list of volunteers, how and where do we train them so that they are ready on opening day?

Training volunteers can take as little as 30 minutes and should include a tour of the building, a review of the sign-in/out procedure, and a walk-through of tasks they may be asked to complete. In a perfect world, we would host volunteer orientations at the new branch in the weeks leading up to the opening. With the branch still incomplete, this isn’t possible. Instead, we could lean on our partnership with the local middle and high schools to host shelver orientations in their libraries. I could show my Introduction to Shelving PowerPoint, distribute handouts, and assign the teens “homework” of completing an online shelving test, or given enough time, give each teen a cart and test them on how accurately they ordered those materials.

The downside is that volunteers would not be learning to shelve in the building where they would be volunteering. Gum Spring Library’s 40,000 square-foot, two-story layout will take time to get used to. It has separate areas, spine labels, and rules for shelving in adults, teens, children, and media.Training in 400 square feet of school library space will not give any idea of the scope of the task. Furthermore, the school library might not use the Dewey Decimal System (DDS), leaving the teens without experience sorting by number, author’s last name, and title. Approximately 25 percent of the teens I train as shelvers do not ever return to volunteer, or, upon completing the online quiz or the slip test tell me they did not like the attention to detail and/or the monotony of sorting and shelving. If the volunteers were trained without hands-on practice of DDS, would they be turned-off or overwhelmed when they finally did experience it?

All this leaves me still solving the problem of how to orient this valuable volunteer force by Opening Day. I hope we can train them inside the new branch, but we may have to call on school libraries and/or other public library branches to lend us some space. If so, we’ll make the best of it, but the teens will need even more flexibility than we usually expect of them.

Fresh Paint traces the development of teen services for a new public library in an underserved community.

Sarah Beth Durst

Donna Rosenblum, librarian, Floral Park (NY) Memorial High School, does everything she can to get her teens engaged in reading and writing, and author visits are always on her mind. Local YA author Sarah Beth Durst was already scheduled for a visit when Superstorm Sandy came whipping in. Undaunted, Rosenblum bumped the date forward to early December. That’s when Durst spoke at the Floral Park Memorial High School (FPM) library. The appearance was the sixth installment of the FPM’s READS program, which Rosenblum initiated to bring students, staff, and parents together for author visits.

Durst is the author of the young adult novels Vessel, Drink Slay Love, Enchanted Ivy, and Ice, all from Simon & Schuster, as well as middle grade novels Into the Wild and Out of the Wild from Penguin Young Readers. She has twice been a finalist for the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America’s (SFWA) Andre Norton Award, for both Ice and Into the Wild. At READS, Durst discussed why she became a writer, the writing and publishing process, and her own personal experiences as an author. She encouraged students to articulate ideas, write about what they love and keep at it no matter what. Durst focused on writing strategies that work for her but also discussed those of other authors she is friendly with, and how what works for one person does not necessarily work for another. After speaking to the crowd of 80 people, Durst answered questions and signed books. About 16 copies of her books were provided courtesy of the Floral Park Memorial High School Parent-Teacher-Student Association and raffled off to attendees. An additional 25 copies of her books were sold.

Check out this video to hear Durst talk about the story behind her latest title, Vessel, published in September 2012, also from S&S.

Each 300-word entry must be submitted by an intergenerational team consisting of one young person, 8 to 18 years old, and one older person, at least 50 years old, from the United States or Canada. The essay must be an original, true story about a real event or experience in the older entrant’s life and be based on an actual interview the young person completes in person, over the phone, or via the Internet with a living older adult.

One grand prize award winner will receive a Lenovo ThinkCentre computer and a keepsake timepiece from Expressions of Time, a family owned retailer of quality clocks and home accessories. Ten Legacy Award winners will receive a keepsake timepiece from Expressions of Time, and all of the winners will receive a framed award certificate and an autographed copy of Dream, an award-winning bestseller about time, legacies, and dreams.

This national contest is run by the Legacy Project at www.legacyproject.org, a big-picture learning project, and the nonprofit organization Generations United in Washington, DC. The contest deadline is March 22, 2013.

Each CSLP member state that chooses to participate in the 2013 Teen Video Challenge will organize and carry out their own competition to select their state winner. The winning video from each participating state will be named one of the CSLP 2013 Teen Videos to promote summer reading nationwide.

A prize of $275 will be awarded to the creators of the winning state video, and their public library will receive prizes worth $125 from CSLP and Upstart, a supplier of library promotional materials and reading incentives. Winners will be announced by CSLP in spring 2013. For full details about the contest and to find out how to enter your state’s competition, visit www.cslpreads.org.

CSLP is a grassroots consortium of member states working together to provide children, teens, and families with summer reading programs and promotional materials for public libraries.

It was important for me to establish a calendar that set a standard, but left plenty of room to grow. I was inclined to host dozens of programs during the first few months in order to show the community everything we were capable of doing, but heeded the advice from the director who advised me to leave enough room in the schedule to add, but never to take away, programs. Adding programs as we get to know the community’s interests is a step forward; cancelling a program because of overbooking or realizing there’s no interest in it is a step backwards. While we may not have as many programs planned as other libraries, we have plenty of wiggle room in the schedule as well as preapproval for last-minute additions, if need be.

Although I was trying to keep the overall number of programs relatively low, there were just too many programming opportunities in March that I couldn’t pass up. So that month, we’ll be celebrating Teen Tech Week with a weeklong QR code scavenger hunt, and we’ll be hosting a mathematician who will talk about the role of women in mathematics to celebrate Women’s History Month. These nationally-celebrated themes allow librarians to be creative with programming and show patrons that libraries are for more than just books, which our patrons—many of whom are first-time library users—might not know.

With two full-time teen services librarians and two full-time assistants, we have plenty of time and talent to host “stock” programs, including a book club and teen advisory board. There’s no need to reinvent the wheel with these tried-and-true programs, just some tweaking to make them applicable to our patrons. Other branches host monthly anime and graphic novel clubs, Picturing America art clubs, and writing clubs. We’ve left our schedule open so we can offer these types of programs if our teens express interest in them (we hope they will!).

Taking into account holidays and special celebrations, but not wanting to stretch the staff thin, I scheduled a Saturday afternoon to make Mother’s Day cards and a Monopoly tournament during spring break. Setting up a craft or game and occasionally checking in to see how they’re going is all that’s required, though a librarian should be present during these activities. We can help make cards or even be the Monopoly banker! These opportunities are perfect for building relationships with teens, and we should take advantage every chance we get.

The library hosts annual county-wide programs for teens, including a summer reading program, an AnimeCon, and a film competition. When the Gum Springs library opens in February 2013 we’ll be in the middle of accepting entries for our third annual “It’s All Write” short story contest. The deadline to enter is early March, so beginning in January, we’ll have to publicize it as much as possible during outreach events at our local schools, as well as on our social media pages.

Planning programs is difficult enough, but now we need to tell people about them before we open, in just three months. Our talking points just went from informing teens of our existence to informing them of the specific programs and events we have planned. We’re now passing out program flyers printed with program names, dates, and times. We’ll use what we have scheduled as a jumping-off point, and make additions and adjustments as we get to know our patrons interests, likes, dislikes, and desires.

While any ideas relating to YALSA resources, using technology, or encouraging teen participation in libraries are encouraged, the 365 Days of YA Task Force also wants to hear about any program, service, display, or activity that has been a hit with your young adult patrons. Send all ideas to 365daysofya@gmail.com, and keep sending them through June 2013, when the task force wraps up and makes the 365 Days of YA calendar available via the YALSA website.

In recognition that programming is an essential part of service delivery in all types of libraries, school, public, academic, and special libraries are all eligible; the program/series must have been for a public audience. The nominated cultural/thematic program should be one that features the humanities, sciences, arts, creative arts, community and civic engagement programs, and should have engaged the community in planning, sponsorship and/or active participation, addressed an identified community need, and have had a measurable impact. Please contact the ALA Public Programs Office, publicprograms@ala.org or 800-545-2433 x5045, with questions.

Right now, if you live in Gum Spring, the nearest public library is nine miles away. To reach it, you have to drive on construction-laced, heavily trafficked roads into a neighboring county, and that’s why many adults don’t use the public library and aren’t familiar with its resources. At one of the back-to-school nights, parents of middle school and high school students were shocked to learn that we’ll be offering free ebooks, as well as computers, printers, scanners, and a 3,000-square-foot teen center that will be right in their own backyard (or, no more than a five-minute drive). When she heard the news, one parent sighed and said, “Why didn’t I know about this before now? I would have saved so much money!”

Unlike some of their parents, most teens are thrilled that they’ll finally have “something to do” when we open. Currently, there are no teen-friendly hangouts nearby, and our teen center will be a welcome addition for them. Unfortunately, some community members have already expressed concern about teens loitering around the new building. “Will the teens be loud and disruptive?” they’ve asked. “Will they compromise the safety of the library?” To which I’ve proudly responded, “No.” Not only does the library have rules regarding appropriate behavior, but teens, though sometimes loud, aren’t a pack of hooligans looking to cause trouble. In fact, teenagers are the perfect library users, checking out materials they need for assignments, browsing the collection for fun stuff (including DVDs, games, and good books), forming groups and working collaboratively, using technology, and keeping librarians aware of emerging tech trends. Sure, some kids may loiter, but that’s what we want them to do! We want them to take advantage of our free resources, talk to us, and form their own community. We want them to learn, teach, and grow, both with us and because of us.

Some adults fear teens because they’ve forgotten what it’s like to be one. Teens are works in progress, trying to figure out who they are and where they belong. Libraries encourage individual growth by recommending books, hosting age-appropriate programs, and providing resources and opportunities for kids to develop. The library can also bridge the gap between the generations by creating opportunities for adults and teens to interact on a level other than parent to child, or teacher to student. Teens, being naturally adept at all things technology, can assist reference librarians in running computer and technology programs for adults. Mom-and-daughter book clubs, intergenerational gaming nights, and even volunteering side-by-side in the library are just a few ways that adults and teens can foster mature relationships inside the library. To use this decade’s buzzword, these are genuine “teachable moments.”

Although the new library will soon be the new kid on the block that every teen wants to get to know, some adults are bound to feel uncomfortable with that. But if we can properly educate them on how to use the new library and help them see that the teen center is a safe, supportive space for kids, then our library will become a true community center.

Rose took an entire ream of light blue paper and started cutting like mad. (We had little blue pieces of paper floating around our back offices for a week….) In what seemed like an instant, she created a blue paper tree, a ballot box and adornments, and a book display—all sporting the iconic Blue Spruce Award namesake.

Rose gave me important reminders about what the whole Blue Spruce Award is about: letting teens have a voice, encouraging them to express their likes and dislikes, and letting them do what they do. More importantly, most teen librarians would agree that our ultimate goal is to get kids involved in whatever way we can. Rose submitted her Blue Spruce pick, and then got her sister to vote. That’s when I decided to get our teen board in on the action. We made little, blue leaves to attach to the Blue Spruce labels that said, “I voted” for voters to take, and sure enough, our teen board members all voted. One person suggested we put little blue leaves up around the Teen Space and around the Teen Library to drum up even more interest in the award—what a great idea! We’ll see just how many votes we get this year. If you’re in Boulder and see anyone with little blue leaves attached to their clothes, ask them who they voted for! I truly appreciate all the work that Rose, the Boulder Teen Advisory Board, and the Colorado Blue Spruce Award committee have done to make this such a fun and meaningful program for our teens.