Teen Midnight Madness at the Portland Public Library

On Friday February 10, we kept the library open till MIDNIGHT for 18 lucky teens. This is their story….

7pm till Midnight. 17 teens. 4 boxes of pizza. Madness.

This program wouldn’t have been possible without the awesome support of Officer Ray Ruby, Youth Services officer for the Portland Police Department.  There’s a big reason why Officer Ruby was named the 2011 Portland (Maine) Police Department Officer of the Year.  I’ll turn it over to Officer Ruby:

Ruby said it’s all about building future relationships with the young people. During his tenure as head of Youth Services he worked toward establishing good rapport with city youth, formulating different methods of interaction with them, with the goal of creating more trust and understanding between young people and police.

He started a soccer league and worked out a partnership with the Portland Public Library to have an evening called Teen After Hours. This is a monthly collaborative program when the library remains open after normal hours, for teens only.

He also has served as a Big Brother and was described by his department’s new chief as “an exceptional mentor and role model.”

He engaged other officers to accompany him to Longcreek Correctional Institute once a month to establish regular contact with some of the young people being held there. This has been ongoing for a year and a half.

Ebooks, again

Every blog post should have a good image. I don't have a good image for ebooks, so this sloth will have to do. They're really neat animals. Carol Schaffer took this picture, and you can find the original picture here: http://goo.gl/eQX0A

Now that Penguin has pulled out of lending ebooks to libraries, that leaves 2 of the 5 big publishers left in the library lending ebook game.

I don’t know about you, but the whole situation depresses me.  It’s not because there are less and less ebooks and not many way other ways to get ebooks into libraries, but because it feels like every time something happens in regards to ebooks and libraries, the same thing happens over and over again.  People involved with libraries recommend that you:

• Cancel your subscription to Overdrive
• Quit buying physical books from these publishers
• Write the publishers and voice your concern
• Talk to your patrons about what the publishers are doing
• BoycottTweet/Blog/+1/Facebook a lot about it

And I’m not saying that any of these things are wrong.  I’m a firm believer in people doing whatever they feel is best for them to do at that moment in time.  But it all just feels like we’ve had these discussions before and it’s led to…the same thing happening.

I don’t have a clear answer of what libraries should be doing, but what I keep coming back to is this: The ebook wars have given us an excellent opportunity to forever change the idea of what a library means.  Long before ebooks came along, we were doing so much more for our patrons (reference, the library as a space, programming) but we were still known as the “place where all of the books are”.  Now that we can’t have ebooks, we can work towards getting rid of that stereotype.  We can change our image to include everything we do: we provide space, we make stuff, we inspire people, and we lend out a lot of neat things.

To me, this is a beautiful way forward.

SOURCES OF INSPIRATION:

A model to work towards
His ideas make me want to try new things
These collected ideas are extremely valuable

 

#libday8 recap

Monday|
-My wife Haley has the flu, so I spend all day in pajamas playing with my sons Finn and Aero.  I love the library, but it’s nice to be home.

Tuesday
-Met with Rick from Casablanca Comics to discuss plans for programs at the library during the Maine Comics Arts Festival.  Good things are happening this year.  I can’t stress just how important partnerships and good community relationships are for making the public library relevant.

-The Telling Room once again visited the library for their Telling Room @ the Teen Library Tuesday event.  It’s very nice to have them around to interact and work with the teens on Tuesdays.  It’s been a few months since we started this program, and it’s at a point where the teens know that Tuesday=Telling Room.  There’s still lots of work to be done with the program, but it’s off the ground and looking good for the future.

-Thinking about ways to drum up more interest in this event: Interested in Creating Some Artwork for the Library?

-No matter how much time passes and how many times I have to do it, it will always be really hard to ask teens who are blatantly disrespecting the library and the posted rules to leave for the day.  It’s hard to put it into writing and admit it, but sometimes teens are asked to leave the library for a day, a week, or even more if things get serious.  It’s a very emotional thing for me…I want to keep teens in the library and engage them but sometimes it has to go the other way.

Wednesday
So very busy today.  We saw over 150 teens today, and most of them came between 1-3pm.  I was tired out by 3pm and stayed till 5:30pm but it was all sort of a haze.

I worked a lot on the background information for these two lending projects:

Nooks for Teens at the Portland Public Library
iPods for Teens at the Portland Public Library

Thursday
Started the day with email, and then talked to our programming manager about my FY 11-12 teen programming budget.  We’ve got some good ideas to move ahead!

Did a bunch of social media posts for this project: Wanna Make Some Art?

Tomorrow I will participate in the library wide tour for a middle school class.  Our departments will each spend some time with them and tell them about what we do at the library.  At the end of it, we’ll have pizza!

Thanks for reading my posts for #libday8!