I’’m pretty lucky as far as teen librariansgo. The library I work at is right nextto the only high school in town. I getbetween twenty and forty teens in thebuilding every afternoon, and when I runa program I get between fifteen andtwenty-five teens. That being said, I rarelysee these teens so much as glance at theshelves. Many of these teens aren’t bigreaders in the conventional way. Or atleast they don’t see themselves as readersbecause they don’t really like to readbooks, but some enjoy reading magazinesor articles online. Other teens haveconfessed to having enjoyed reading as achild and subsequently losing thatpassion as they grew older because they felt that the options out there just weren’tvery interesting.

LAURA PEOWSKI HORN is currently working as the Teen LibrarianIntern at the Farmington Public Libraries, Main Branch inFarmington, Connecticut. She received her M.S. in Library Sciencefrom the Graduate School of Library and Information Science atSimmons College in Boston, Massachusetts. She is the Chair of the2011 Teen Tech Week committee and is serving on the Teen SpaceGuidelines Task Force.

What I’ve Learned So Far

When I first started as the Teen LibrarianIntern at the Farmington Public Librariesmain branch, I worked tirelessly topromote the collection to the teens. Iwould try to engage all of my after schoolregulars in conversations about books theyhad liked, or hated and would then try tohelp them find a book to check out. I gotpretty discouraged when most teenssimply responded that they didn’t like to read and then turned back to theirFacebook account on the computer. Okay,so what exactly are you doing hanging outin a place full of books? I didn’tunderstand. I thought everyone who cameto the library liked to read. When I was ateen, I would go to my public library tocheck out books or do research for school,I never just hung out on the computers. Iwas starting to feel  a little in over myhead. Yes, we had discussed teens justhanging out in the library in graduateschool, but honestly I just didn’t believe itwas true.  At the same time that I realized manyof my after-school regulars weren’tconventional readers, I also noticed thatthere were different groups of after-schoolregulars. Some teens just hung out andtalked, some just hung out at thecomputers and some played Wii or didhomework. I also noticed that our teencirculation rates were pretty good. So, Ithought there must be a group here thatI’m missing. Then I thought, well maybeI’ll meet those teens when I run theSummer Reading Finale Ice Cream Social.When the big day arrived, about twentyfive teens showed up at the ice cream social.The funny thing was, less than half of themhad even participated in our summerreading program. The majority of the teenswho came to the social were a group of myafter-school regulars. At this point I had toconcede to the fact that maybe there was agroup of teens out there that just didn’t seethe library as a place for them to hang out.This could either mean that they don’t wantto hang out at the library, which is fine, orthat they don’t know that they can, which ofcourse is not fine, or it could mean that theyjust don’t have the means to get to thelibrary on a weekday afternoon.

Regardless of the reason or goal thatmotivate our marketing campaigns, thoseof us who serve teens know that reachingthem isn’t always easy. And just when youthink you have reached them all, you realize there is yet another group out therehiding in the stacks. Librarians need toconstantly be on the lookout for thosegroups and open to adopting innovativeways to bring the library and all that it hasto offer to those teens.

The most important things toremember when marketing (online marketing strategy) to teens are:

1. Don’t be afraid to try newtechnologies.

2. Don’t get discouraged when what youtry doesn’t work.

3. Know your audience.

4. Choose your delivery methods wisely.Book trailers and YouTube videosmay be great posts on the library’s teenFacebook account, but they may bepointless posts on a Web site if yourreaders don’t look there.

5. Having a good foundation is crucial.All the fancy features and widgets inthe world aren’t going to help if no oneis reading your blog, Web site, or Facebook updates.

(С) By Laura Peowski Horn