Teens are an important audience to public libraries and one of the harder groups to reach. I have said it here before and I will probably say it here and other places again.

Let me say first that not all teens that come into our libraries are problems. We have teens that we employ as shelvers to work after school getting books back on the shelves and we also regularly have high school students doing work experience in our libraries and most of these teens have been great. Quite a few have gone on to become part time library officers and still work in our libraries many years later. We also have regular teen borrowers, who have good relationships with the staff and have never caused a hiccup of any sort. Unfortunately, they are not the ones who first come to mind when talking teens and they are not the ones that the rules are introduced to deal with.

However, we do have problem teens, that are a pretty constant issue for us, so it was interesting to come across a couple of blog posts that have come really close to home for me, with their experiences of teens in their libraries. Its scary when you read something like this and realise it could just as well be you writing it about your library and experiences. (or close to it anyway).

The first comes from Real Public Librarian who talks about the issues of having a totally inclusive youth library in “Youth in libraries - are you really ready to welcome them in?” You would think the answer is obvious, teens are future users of public libraries, so of course we are - but its not that simple. Deb works in such a library and hypothetically talks about the problems of balance that she and other public librarians (including myself) have to deal with on a daily basis. That balance being between welcoming all teens and the assorted behaviours that come with them and not alienating some of those teens and your other users. Very thought provoking post.

Then from Happyville Library and the witty and insightful Happy Villain comes “Self help for Happy Villain“. Happy Villain outlines one usual day with the assorted teen crowd that has invaded the library, yet again and all the demeanours and misdemeanours that go with it. This post is doing the rounds at my library and there are staff who aren’t laughing when they read it, instead they are nodding their heads in sympathy and understanding.

I can relate to Happy Villain’s predicament, there are times when I feel similarly after having to deal with teens all day. However, that doesn’t mean we close our doors and our services to them. In fact, we have turned the PCs to our advantage with teens, with a number of successful gaming nights being held at several of our branches, which have drawn new teens into our libraries. Going back to Deb’s experiences however, its finding the balance, that brings teens in with their baggage without alienating too many other people.

I know its hard for teens, but its hard for the staff too. Each group expects respect and its not always forthcoming. Our manager has come to a kind of understanding with a key group of teen offenders and we have good days as a result - even the bad days can be managed to a certain extent when you have that understanding to fall back on. Input from our Council youth workers has also been helpful for staff. Still, its hard sometimes to respond evenly and fairly to some of those teens, even when they have a good day, because of all the bad experiences we have had with them.

Amazingly, despite this sometimes acrimonious relationship between certain teens and staff, they still keep coming. Maybe they have nowhere else to go or nothing else to do, it could be that despite the staff they feel like the library is OK - realistically, its probably just that they can’t get internet access freely and easily anywhere else in the local area and they will put up with whatever they have to, to get that access.

As a lot of issues with teens in our libraries come from the use of our public PCs, it doesn’t hurt that we have a PC booking system coming in the next few months. Hopefully, that will eliminate or at least greatly reduce, the aggravation resulting from how these teens use our PCs - at least from a staff perspective. The staff have a something to look forward to, an end in sight and they can’t wait. The teens should be happier too in one respect, they won’t have the staff all over them about breaching the conditions of use! Whether they see it that way, is another thing!

Once they are limited with the PC hogging, will they find other ways to be disruptive? We have had our fair share of vandalism, pranks and bad behaviour not related to the PCs. Will they move onto other things in the library once their PC booking is over, like reading magazines, or gasp! borrowing! We have a great (under-utilised) teen collection of books, magazines, DVDs, CDs, audio and graphic novels etc. Or will they leave as soon as their time is up? The PCs are by far the biggest drawcard, both for teen library use and teen bad behaviour. Only time will tell what the effect of this change will be and whether all groups involved will be happy(?) with the results.