The Ottawa Public Library is trying to improve its youth services by developing “teen zones” that focus on a group of library users who have been overlooked in the past.
Teen services are at the top of the Ottawa Public Library board’s newly released list of funding priorities for 2011, with planned expenditures of $120,000 per year.
The city’s chief librarian, Barbara Clubb, says the high priority status and the push for new and improved teen services is a part of the OPL’s strategic directions plan started in 2008.
One of the main goals is to provide service to future leaders, she says. Teens were selected as a high-priority group in this category along with small business owners, entrepreneurs and newcomers.
Jane Venus, the library’s manager of children and teen services, says the focus on teens is about more than just encouraging future taxpayers to support library services.
“We are a great resource,” she says. “We are a community resource, so we should be a resource for everyone in the community and that includes teens.”
The plan has already helped create 17 teen zones in libraries across Ottawa, says Clubb.
The main branch on Metcalfe Street is home to one of these zones.
Green-and-yellow walls, teen fiction, magazines and graphic novels are what separate the teen zone from the adult space in the downtown branch.
The new funding would be geared towards improving teen zones across the city to make them more readily identifiable.
A lot goes into establishing a teen zone, says Clubb, explaining why funding for teen services is a high priority.
“(It) takes computers in some cases, it takes furniture, it takes moulding on the walls, it takes chairs, and sometimes it takes a restructuring of the whole library,” Clubb says.
On top of making teen zones more visible, funding will be focused on hiring and training staff who work specifically with teens, organizing events, and on developing teen advisory groups.
There are currently only four librarians specializing in teen services in the city’s library system and Clubb says funding could help increase this number.
“It’s about having bodies to work,” says Clubb, “because right now we only have one and a half persons specifically designated (to teen services).”
Last Friday, the main branch hosted “Let’s Get Loud at the Library,” an event that combined reading with music. A teen author and teenage bands were the entertainment.
Emilie Couture, 19, was at the event although she said she is not a frequent library user. “But if there were more events like these I would come a lot more and it would probably help me discover more about the library,” said Couture.
The teen advisory groups are expected to give officials a better idea about what teens want out of their library services.
The goal is to create the groups in as many branches as possible. This presents the opportunity for a “super-teen advisory group” to advise the whole system, says Venus.
“It’s not about doing something radically different. It’s doing what we’re doing in a more focused way,” Venus says.
The library also used a similar approach when it introduced newcomer services at the main branch in November 2009.