The twilight zone: bringing youth into libraries.

• Author: Shay, Cathy

Swansea Library's first offer of programs for local teens was met with little enthusiasm. So began an investigation into developing a youth program that would be attractive to them. Library staff went back to basics and spent time surveying local youth. The process was simple, but intensive in its collection, and the results gave staff great insight. The programming that followed is based on these results and still in its infancy. This paper covers the investigation, the methods', interaction with the teens, the survey results, planning and promotion, and outcomes. Edited version of a paper presented at '12 to 24s @ your public library in Australia and New Zealand conference' Qld 11-12 June 2010.

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Have you heard about all of the libraries that hold fantastic youth events, and get lots of kids attending, and everyone has a great time, and cannot wait for the next event, which is even better than the first? Well ... that is not our story. Whilst we have had some success, we have also had lots of unsuccesses. That does not make us failures. It just means we have to work harder.

Background

Swansea Library services a large area on the south eastern side of Lake Macquarie, about two hours north of Sydney. It is a relatively new building, having been open for five years. The library, and indeed the Lake Macquarie City Library system, holds many programs, activities and events for all ages, but the one age group missing out on regular activities was youth. Whilst a youth centre operates out of The Swansea Centre where the library is situated, limited public transport and lack of other facilities in the area mean that youth complain of being bored. This seemed to make Swansea the perfect library to try something for this age group. It took the first two years to settle into the new building, and so for the past two years the Swansea Library team has been slowly implementing programming for youth in the area, and trying to bring more of them into the library--all on no additional budget. It has been, and still is, a long process.

This paper is about the process and investigation into what youth want, and how we might meet their needs. It is also about how we trialled various programs--what worked and what did not. It is not always positive, which for some may be unusual. But we often only hear the positives, and without the unsuccesses or failures we would not have learnt as much. This is a warts and all trip.

Introduction

Being a new library with a young and young minded team, and knowing the youth of the area needed something to attract them, we were keen to set about seeing what we could offer them by way of entertainment. We read about all the great programs other libraries were presenting, here in Australia and overseas. It looked simple enough. Online and print library journals were full of positive experiences with huge attendances, and we anticipated similar reactions. All of our other programs are very successful, so there was no reason why those for youth should be any different. Yet our initial offer of programs was met with little interest. This was disappointing, but we soldiered on. Unsure what we were doing wrong, when so many others had positive responses, we decided to go back to basics and spend more time developing a program that would be attractive to youth.

Little did we know at the time that this would be a long ongoing process that would try our patience and at times make us question our sanity. Sometimes our enthusiasm dropped, sometimes we got a little cranky, and a lot of the times we questioned why we were doing it at all and if it was worth continuing. But every time we hit upon a success it fed the desire to keep going.

Tell us what you want, what you really, really want

The mediocre response to the initial programs highlighted the fact we needed to ask our youth what they wanted. We are near a large public high school, so this seemed like the best place to start. We were still unsure as to the best way to engage the kids, and to have them tell us what they wanted. We really needed to get a large captive audience, and decided the easiest way was to invite the entire year 7 to Swansea Library. So our first program was born. In second term last year we had each year 7 class visit to look at how the library can assist them with school assignments and study. Teachers brought each class for a 90 minute session. They had the standard tour of the library, followed by a short talk about what the library has to offer. Then they were divided into two groups, one learning how to use the...