I am not talking about the general problems involving youth in our society. I am no expert and don’t have the time or inclination to discuss it here. However, youth does impact our libraries today and will do so as our future adult users, so we need to be marketing ourselves to them.
Its no secret that young people think that libraries are uncool. That’s OK, that’s not a problem. We don’t need to be cool, we just need to be on their list of things to do. We have great stock on our shelves, in the way of books, magazines, CDs, DVDs and we have free internet access. So why aren’t the young people streaming in the door?
Well, some are, which is good and bad. At our libraries we have multitudes of young people coming into the library to use our free internet access - but a regular group of those young people cause a great deal of trouble, stress for our staff and discomfit for other patrons. It would be easy to just kick them out and get rid of the problem, but that could also result in getting rid of a large section of the market we are trying to reach.
Now I know that all young people are not trouble. I am friends with quite a few great teens, who love to read, or use the Net and who are no trouble at all. But when you are working with the public, it doesn’t seem like we have too many of them coming into our libraries.
So how do we get those teens to come in. How do we get more teens of every sort to use our libraries and make the most of all the resources we have available - not just the Net.
I guess getting them in the door first is the hardest part. Lately our library service has been having some success with a few events, namely Internet games nights, a knitting workshop, cartooning and more. We get invaded by a wave of teens, who have an awesome time and leave with good impressions of their local library.
Its a start, but in our area we have the highest proportion of young people in our State, so we have to do more. They are not only our current users, but our future users who will hopefully bring their children and their children’s children to the library, whatever form that is in. Knowing that, it makes it even more important to make sure we are reaching them now.
How? I will be exploring that issue in upcoming posts. So stay tuned!
