Program Time FIllers: End Time Ain't Here Yet

Ever had an awesome program where everything went so swimmingly that you had some extra time before the parent's came to pick up their teens? Ever had a mediocre program where you should have prepared that one more activity? Ever had an awful program where things just aren't working?

Well, first of all you are not alone (as I've done all of them before lol), and second of all, I figured some fun and easy time fillers might be useful.

Just Dance 
Attach a projector to a computer, grab some speakers, and search YouTube for Just Dance. Users have screen-capture videos of many of the songs, and all of your teens can dance at the same time instead of having to wait for a controller.

Airband Awesomeness 
Attach a projector to a computer, and get some speakers set up. Ask students what songs they would like to hear. Encourage them to pretend they are the band members, just using air instead of real instruments. Blow-up guitars, fake microphones, and rulers as drumsticks also help. 

Zombie Tag 
One or two participants start out as zombies. They have to walk and growl like zombies, and try to tag other players (without running as Zombies don't have that much bone tissue and muscle left). As soon as a player gets tagged, they also become zombies. The last one or two people to get tagged are the zombies for the next round. 

Library Craziness

Let the Teens have fun with library resources. Do a book cart drag race, tallest book tower challenge, or a rolling chair obstacle course.

Minute to Win It

You have 60 seconds to complete a challenge of awesome and sometimes hilarious actions. Many of these games only require simple supplies, and are easy to explain. It also helps that their website comes complete with videos, supply lists, and explanations of the activities.

 

Creating Successful Teen Programming...

Is it possible to create successful teen programming starting from the ground up? I think so.

Now, I won’t say that I have successful teen programming at this point. But I will say that I hope to create a successful teen program in the next few years. What do I base this confidence on? Well the first thing is that other libraries have done it. Other libraries, of equal size to our library and district, have created and maintained a successful teen program. I hope I can learn from their experiences and successes to help our success.

Another confidence booster is the budding success of Airband Awesomeness. I’ve contacted one of the families that came to the event, and they are excited that we are doing something similar with Jingle Bell Rock. They said they would be spreading the word about the event. I think this will be the biggest step toward a successful teen program; teens and families wanting to get involved with it. I can try to create great programs, post things on blogs, Facebook, and Twitter, but if young adults aren’t being served and enriched, it is all for naught. I hope I can remain even more fully focused on serving our young adult patrons with everything I do.

Finally, I am starting to see interested educators come along side our efforts to start teen programming. As soon as I’ve mentioned teen programming to parents, educators, and librarians, they immediately get excited about it. There hasn’t been a lot done for teens in the library, so I think having somebody on that encourages people. Obviously, I can’t create a successful program on my own, and I thank everyone who has helped me to this point, and everyone who will help me in the future.

So, what is your Community Library Network at Hayden doing in the next few months? We will be launching a Library Next-Gen website. We will be involved in Teen Tech Week and our annual Three Minute Teen Film Festival. We will be continuing to get you new books, and keep our collection up to date. We will start posting book lists that hopefully you will enjoy. We will be starting a Next-Gen Advisory Group in the summer. And we will continue to find what you need from the Community Library Network at Hayden.

Hope you have a great week and thanks for reading!

Well Baby its Cold Outside

Here’s to a momentous occasion! I actually did all of the blog posts I was supposed to do this month! Since I’ve started posting twice a week, I haven’t actually posted twice a week for an entire month. Every now and again I would miss a Book Blurt or a Weekly Update, and so I’ve never gotten over 7 blog posts in a month. Well, here’s to the first time I’ve gotten to 8, and here’s to continuing this trend!

Well this past week has been a little slow (reasons will be forthcoming) so I decided to take advantage of that by getting some planning and tweaking done. The first reason for the slowness was the obvious fact that Thanksgiving was yesterday (hope yours was fantastic!). My colleagues took a few days off, and we didn’t have any of our regular programs scheduled. This freed up some time to spruce up the blog (hence the awesome new look) and to change the names of my social media to something more accurate. (The other reason was the insane amount of snow and cold that we got this past week!)

As I mentioned a little while ago, my library system’s name has changed to Community Library Network, and yet, my social media still said Kootenai Shoshone Area Libraries. So I’ve rectified that situation. My Twitter account is now CLN4NextGen (Community Library Network for Next-Gen Adults), my Facebook is Next-Gen Adults of the Community Library Network, and my blog is now cln4nextgen.blogspot.com. The only social media outlet that hasn’t changed is Youtube. Reason? They won’t let me! All of the other social media outlets allow you to change your name, but for some reason, my Youtube channel doesn’t have that option. I’ll have to think about what to do about that…

Well I also got some planning done this week. Coming up in December, we are doing Jingle Bell Rock! We had so much fun doing Airband Awesomeness that we decided we would do something similar for December. But, we also decided that you didn’t need the pressure of preparing a song for competition, so we are just going to be taking requests and anyone who wants to can rock with it. I’ll provide some Christmas music, pizza, pop, and a laptop (whereby we can look up songs on Youtube) and you bring yourselves, your friends, your ipods, and the desire to have fun and rock out. It is going to be open for grades 6th through 12th, and will be going on December 22 from 7:30-9:00. (Don't worry it won't only be Christmas music; we can play anything you want to)

Even though it seems kind of ironic to be thinking of summer during this wintery blizzard that is also what I did this week. We order things from our Summer Reading vendor a couple months before we actually need the stuff, so I’ve been figuring out what incentives, prizes, and promo stuff we’ll need for June, July, and August. There is some fun stuff coming up!

Once again, I hope you had an amazing Thanksgiving, and I’ll see you in December.

Playing Some Catch Up

Hello again everyone!

So, there have been quite a few things that have come and gone without me having a chance to talk about them, so this week, I am going to play some catch up. I know I’ve been mentioning that for a while, so I figure that I’ll actually follow through and do it today.

But before I do, I mentioned the Community Library Network last week, and said there would be more on it this week. Without getting into a long explanation, our library district (formally called Kootenai Shoshone Area Libraries) has brought on a new library (Post Falls) and has changed its operating name to Community Library Network. I won’t have time to go into some catch up if I keep going, but we’ll come back to this story in the future.

So here’s your catch up. I mentioned the Wrestlemania Reading Challenge for quite a while before Teen Read Week, and people actually participated which is cool! Around fifteen students turned in pledge forms, and I consider that I good start for what I hope we will be able to do next year as well. I also think it is cool that many of those students heard about the competition from one of our school librarians that partnered with us. I love having the opportunity to work with other educators!

The other big thing that happened during Teen Read Week was Airband Awesomeness (click the link for a fun recap video)! This was one of our most successful programs to date, which is, well, AWESOME! We had about 35 people attend, and even though they weren’t all in the tween/teen age group, they all had a great time. Two airbands performed, and the teens did a great job with choreography, lip syncing, and just having fun with it. But, I think the most successful part of the program was the fact that teens I didn’t specifically invite actually came and had a great time at the program. In the past, most of the teen programs have consisted of my family members coming to the programs. (Well, you have to start somewhere, and my family enjoyed the pizza, pop, and fun programs). But, it was really encouraging to see teens I didn’t know coming into the library for a program I put together. It energized me to keep learning from the programs I’m doing, and to make the programs I do in the future even better!

Teen Marketing

Morning everybody! I’m often accused of being too happy in the morning, but I figure that’s a great problem to have.

Anyways, I first wanted to mention that I didn’t get a book blurt post out this week. I think I’ve mentioned it a few times, but my senior research class is quite a bit of work. I had a huge project due on Wednesday, and I dedicated the day to putting the finishing touches on it. I know, that is probably an excuse, and I’ll try not to let that happen again. I’ll definitely be back on Wednesday with an update on what I’ve been reading.

Last Friday, Alysun Sanders dropped in for a visit. She told us a little about her book, Talli's Tale, how she got published, and also about her new series she's writing, The Hollow Series. It was cool to actually meet her in person.

In other news, I feel pretty important. As I mentioned last week, the Idaho Commision for Libraries is doing a Fall Youth Services training, and they are having me present about teen marketing in Coeur d’ Alene and Moscow. As some of you know, I am a communication arts major at Lewis Clark State College, and public speaking is one of my passions. I’m really excited to share what I’ve learned about teen marketing with my fellow librarians.

But, then I have to ask myself, what have I learned about teen marketing? First of all, that it isn’t easy. Getting people to come to the library is difficult, and teens like a really good program. So I’ll keep working in that direction. Secondly, get the word out to as many people as possible through as many different means as possible; facebook, blog, twitter, youtube, flyers, and ridiculousness.

Thirdly, I think its taking one step at a time, and not being discouraged when a huge crowd doesn’t show up at your event. We’re making progress, slowly, but surely. I hope that anyone who reads this blog or has come to one of our teen programs has enjoyed themselves, and I hope to see them again as we keep working toward bigger and better teen programming.

So I’ll probably share that and a few other things to my colleagues at the trainings. In addition to the public speaking opportunity, I’m also getting to work with other librarians from the commission and another library, which is always a treat.

Making sure that my job isn’t normal, I got to help out at some second grade tours yesterday. Hayden Meadows sent three classes walking over to our building, and Miss Cassie and I had a great time showing them our different sections. The bookmobile garage was a huge hit!

Lastly, Airband Awesomeness is tonight at 7pm! Airband is pretty much the end of our October programs (other than turning in the pledge and project forms for Wrestlemania), and I’ve had a great time planning, promoting, and actually doing the programs. I’m excited to see any performers that show up tonight, and even if you don’t have a song, please come down and enjoy some great performances. Myself, a good friend of mine, and our library director, John Hartung (who himself played in a rock band in high school) are going to be the judging panel.

Hope to see you tonight, and if I don’t, I’ll be coming your way on Wednesday with a book blurt.

Authors and Reading Groups

For the past couple of weeks, I have been planning programs; sending emails, taking phone calls, making posters, and putting stuff in the courier. All of this planning is basically coming down to the next two weeks. You might ask why this would be the case. There are two reasons. First, I am striving to have one teen event and one tween event every month. This means that a lot of my time is spent planning for said once a month program. The other reason is that October 17-23 is the national Teen Read Week, and we are celebrating it with some programs!

Tonight I’m super excited to hear Alysun Sanders speak. The program is technically for grades 5-9, but anyone is welcome. I had a chance to talk to Alysun on Monday, and she is really looking forward to coming down. If you are interested in writing at all, or if you want to support a local author, then come on down tonight from 6:30-7:30.

Working backwards, I went to Bryan Elementary yesterday. One of the fifth grade teachers and I are starting a Guys Read group at the school. Guys Read is a website that was started by author Jon Scieszka. There are Guys Read groups all over the nation, and we are starting one here in town. Every two weeks we will be meeting to discuss books that other guys will also enjoy.

Back on Monday, I had my monthly Ka-Boom Science Experiments program. This is something I’ll be doing every month on the second Monday from 4-5pm. This month, we did water experiments. Since our Summer Reading theme were water related, I figured that a water experiments were appropriate to start the fall as well. We got a chance to talk about density, the freezing temperature of water, and how boats float.

For the rest of the week, I was working on a promotional video for our Airband Awesomeness competition on October 22 from 7-9pm. Last Friday, Karen, Cassie, Connie, Emily and I got together to do some filming. It took us about two hours, and we were having way too much fun! You can watch the video on Facebook here. Hope you like it, and I hope you’ll join us for Airband Awesomeness on the 22nd.

In November, there is going to be a youth services conference put on by the Idaho Commission for Libraires, and I’ve been asked to present! I’m supposed to talk about teen services and ways to promote it. Now, I’m still working on better ways to get the word out about my programs, and I don’t think that I’m ever going to be an expert on it. But, I’m really honored to be asked to share my ideas with other librarians.

Hope to see you tonight or next week. Take care!

Library Awesomeness!

Sorry about being a couple days late. This weekend ran away from me. But, there is plenty to talk about, so here is your weekly update on Monday.

Last weekend I was chillin’ with my friends at Triple Play, and a little girl came up and gave me a bear hug. For a split second I was wondering who she could be, and then her mom gave me some context as she said something to the effect of “It must be library time.” This little girl had seen me at one of the library programs and decided to give me a hug even though we weren’t at the library. I love my job!

Another cool thing that happened this week was the Idaho Library Association’s Annual Conference. There were two amazing aspects to this conference for me. First, I got to attend a SPLAT unconference. SPLAT stands for Special Project Library Action Team. Many of the techno savvy librarians in Idaho are a part of this group, and I got to spend the morning and afternoon on Wednesday just gleaning from their knowledge and ideas. I now have plenty of websites and things to look up.

During lunch at the conference I got the pleasure of hearing Chris Crutcher speak. Chris is a well known author whose books often find themselves on banned book lists. Although I’m still wondering where I sit on having some kinds of questionable content in books, hearing Chris’s take on book banning was very interesting and worthwhile. He talked about finding the truth in a story, and bringing that across in his books. Chris was an excellent speaker, and hearing someone else’s take on intellectual freedom is always interesting.

Looking back over the week I’m realizing that I had an even busier week then I thought I did. On Thursday, I got the pleasure of going to Bryan Elementary and awarding kids their summer reading prizes. Bryan set up a special program called the Bear Necessities where kids could get prizes for reading books during the summer. The Hayden Library was one of the biggest sponsors for the program, so Bryan invited us to be a part of the award ceremony. Seeing kids get excited about a free book, and a room full of parents, teachers, and students cheering for reading was a very rewarding experience.

Lastly, the youth services staff and I filmed a promo video for our Airband Awesomeness competition, which is on October 22 from 7:00-9:00. We took “Vacation” by the Go-Gos, grabbed our blow up guitars and Curious George rulers and rocked for a good two hours! The video should be up soon, and it is going to be amazing!

Looking toward this Friday, Alysun Sanders will be joining us from 6:30-7:30. As I’ve mentioned before, she will be discussing writing, being an author, and getting published. Snacks will be provided, and Alysun is really excited to talk to all of you!

Hope you can join us on Friday, and I’ll talk to you guys later.

Books with Beat!

Well hello again everybody. Another week has come and gone, and here we are on Friday again.

The life of a programming librarian can include many meetings, and this week started with one. I had a chance to sit down with the secondary education librarians from the Coeur d’ Alene school district. We chatted about the Hayden library’s upcoming October programs and ways to support each other and stay in contact. I love meetings when everybody is on the same page and want to move toward the same goal.

Wednesday brought the Inland Northwest Blood Center bus to the library. The bus has been coming to the library for the past two years, and staff members and patrons have consistently donated blood. This blood drive was the third time I’ve donated on the bus, and the first time I’ve had any problems. The donating went fine, the standing up afterward went fine, the walking to the back of the bus to eat some treats and drink some juice went fine. What didn’t go fine was a couple minutes later when all color literally ran from my face and a snowstorm was playing in front of my eyes. Turns out that donating blood on an empty stomach isn’t a good idea. This is something that I know, but didn’t practice this time. But, the blood center has a few units of my blood, and I have my color back.

Last week, I mentioned a few programs that were coming up in October, and I wanted to expound on them a little bit. Alysun Sanders, a graduate from Lake City High School, has published a book called “Talli’s Tale.” She is going to be at the library on October 15 from 6:30-7:30pm. Although she only has one book published, Alysun has enjoyed writing and telling stories for her entire life. She is going to be discussing being an author, getting published, and writing.

The next Friday, October 22, we are having Airband Awesomeness from 7:00-9:00pm. October 17-23 is Teen Read Week, a national event put on by the young adult arm (YALSA) of the American Library Association every year, and the theme this year is, “Books with Beat.” We were scratching our heads looking for a fun program, and Karen remembered something hilarious that she did when she was in high school. She told me about airband competitions that were held at her school, and I thought that we had to try it. So, pick a song, divide up the parts (vocals, drums, guitar, etc.), and come rock out with nothing but air. My thought is the more you put into it, the more fun it is going to be. So go all out with costumes, hair, makeup, and the style that the band plays in. If you can’t tell, I’m pretty excited about it.

Something else to do with Teen Read Week is the WrestleMania Reading Challenge. This is an event put on by YALSA (Young Adult Library Services Association), Mattel, and WWE (World Wrestling Entertainment). It involves students from grades 5-12 pledging to read five books between Teen Read Week and April 2011. It also involves students submitting a creative project about literary characters and WWE superstars. The grand prize is ring side seats to WrestleMania 27 in Atlanta! If you are interested come by the library to get the pledge and project sheets, and return them by October 25, 2010.

Don’t want to take up too much more of your time, so I’ll see you on Wednesday.

Wally World

How’s it going everybody?

Anybody else noticing that there was a chill in the air today? Kind of feels like fall is coming on, and I say that with the highest respect for summer I can. Guess we’ll have to hang on to the last weeks of summer and get ready for a great fall!

How have your school weeks been finding you? Back into the routine yet? I’m getting there. Even though we often look toward summer because it is supposed to be less busy, I often find that it is almost exactly the opposite. Why is that? We do get a break from our normal routines, but I found that I filled the time away from the regular routine with things that didn’t run on a routine, but still take just as much time. Needless to say, the last couple weeks of summer were very busy, and it is almost a relief to be back into the routine of school and work.

A few of you are probably wondering why this post is being posted so late. Turns out that I was at a Wal-Mart opening event today. There is a new Wal-Mart store that opened this week in Hayden, and Wal-Mart graciously donated grant money to Hayden businesses that were giving back to their communities. The Kootenai-Shoshone Libraries was one of the recipients. For this reason, we brought out the bookmobile and some foam photo frames and headed off to the Wal-Mart parking lot. Today was kind of windy, and kids were in school, so not too many people came knocking down our door. But, books were still checked out, someone got a library card, and we got to see some familiar library patrons. Not to mention that just spending time with library staff can be way too much fun!

The other big thing I’ve been working on this week is Teen Read Week, something that I’ll be mentioning until it comes from October 17-23. The Idaho Commission for Libraries is doing a statewide contest for promoting Teen Read Week. They called for libraries to submit a storyboard for a Teen Read Week PSA for a chance to win a digital photo frame. I decided to enter into the contest. I have also been a part of the Teen Read Week Coordinating Committee, and they were also looking for ways to promote Teen Read Week. They came up with the idea of committee members making a PSA, so I actually made the PSA, and I also submitted a storyboard for the same PSA.

Teen Read Week is going to be pretty busy with programs. Alysun Sanders is going to be joining us on the Friday before Teen Read Week, we are doing Airband Awesomeness on the Friday of Teen Read Week, and we are also participating in the WrestleMania Reading Challenge. Even though I don’t have time to go into details on those events now, just know that they are going to be awesome!

I’ll catch you on Wednesday for a Book Blurt on Andrew Klavan’s The Last Thing I Remember, which is starting off running, and seems to keep getting better. Blog you later!