http://www.ipl.org/div/teen/ is the link to the Internet Public Library's TeenSpace page.
The Internet Public Library is essentially a public library on the internet. It was started at the University of Michigan and is now hosted by the College of Information Science and Technology at Drexel University. It is run by paid staff and student volunteers. ("About the Internet Public Library") TeenSpace is the teen services section of the IPL.
I chose the TeenSpace website both because it's an excellent example of how a teen library website can be user-friendly and appealing. I also chose it because it includes links to other great ways the IPL connects with teens using technology, from the IPL teen poetry wiki to virtual reference. Any of these could be models for public libraries trying to use the internet to reach out to young patrons.
I used Google Advanced Search to search for "public library" and "internet" and "teen" or "youth" without "school," "program," or "safety." (I took out those three words because otherwise I got lots of hits about school libraries, or library policies about letting youth access the internet on the library computers.) That search gave a particular section of the IPL TeenSpace site, and I truncated the URL to get the TeenSpace home page.
IPL. "About the Internet Public Library." Drexel University. Philadelphia. Accessed March 21, 2008 at http://www.ipl.org/div/teen/.
Friday, March 21, 2008
Competency 8: Multimedia
This is a terrific YouTube video from the Birmingham, Alabama public library advertising their teen summer reading program for 2007. I chose this video for my multimedia blog competency because using YouTube is a great way for a library to connect with teens, and this video does a great job, for various reasons.
First, because the video is on YouTube it reaches teens on their off hours, when they're not at school or work. At my library, we normally advertise the summer reading program at schools before summer vacation starts since that's one way to reach kids who don't come into the library. But identifying the library with school runs the risk of making it a place kids don't really want to be if they don't have to. Advertising teen summer reading on YouTube makes the library feel much more like a part of a teen's recreational life.
Second, the video is sharable - kids can post this video on their blogs or link to it, something they can't do with a paper flyer and probably won't do with a regular library web page.
Third, and very importantly, the video has good production values and is really funny. Eli Neiberger, who's famous in the youth library world for bringing videogaming to Ann Arbor District Library, often points out that to teens, having nothing is better than having something lame. This video is so well done that it makes the summer reading program look professional.
Citation:
Birmingham Public Library. Birmingham Public Library Teen Summer Reading Program 2007. Birmingham, AL. 31 May, 2007. Accessed March 21, 2008 at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWlicnl3HII.
Competency 7: Social Networking - LiveJournal
LiveJournal is a social networking tool that allows users to create what are essentially shared blogs, known as "communities." Community members can make posts and comment on others' posts. In addition, LiveJournal members can see a constantly-updated digest of all the posts in any communities they belong to by reading their "friends page."
Library Grrls is a community mostly made up of librarians, people who work in libraries, and library-school students, all "grrls." The link is to one particular post, with comments, that happens to be on the subject of how to get youth interested in a manga program. Members of the community can write in with questions or comments on any topic, however, including asking for advice, sharing their thoughts on Library 2.0, connecting with other people attending their LIS program, or anything else broadly connected to the theme of the community.
I'm a member of LiveJournal and I find it to be both fun and useful. Paid membership is cheap and means that you don't see any advertising, which is another plus. Overall, I vastly prefer it to MySpace or other social networking sites for the breadth of communities, useful features, and the clean, simple design.
Library Grrls is a community mostly made up of librarians, people who work in libraries, and library-school students, all "grrls." The link is to one particular post, with comments, that happens to be on the subject of how to get youth interested in a manga program. Members of the community can write in with questions or comments on any topic, however, including asking for advice, sharing their thoughts on Library 2.0, connecting with other people attending their LIS program, or anything else broadly connected to the theme of the community.
I'm a member of LiveJournal and I find it to be both fun and useful. Paid membership is cheap and means that you don't see any advertising, which is another plus. Overall, I vastly prefer it to MySpace or other social networking sites for the breadth of communities, useful features, and the clean, simple design.
Competency 6.4: Specific Facet First, Dialog
For my Dialog search I chose the most specific facet first technique, since I knew that this search strategy has the potential to return the best possible results the quickest. I intended to search Dissertation Abstracts for anything about the use of Teen Second Life in libraries. Teen Second Life would definitely be the most specific facet, so I searched for it and got no hits. Then I tried Second Life, figuring that would be less specific, and also got no hits. Then I tried MySpace and got eight results.
Several of the results looked as if they would apply to using MySpace in libraries, including one about folksonomies and one involving students in Brazil.
I logged off quickly to avoid incurring more charges!
Using Dialog made me realize how difficult searching must have been when librarians had to log on to a remote database and incur charges the whole time. And it must have been especially difficult when searches were done in batch mode, since the patron who made the request wasn't even there to answer clarifying questions or modify the search.
I thought the Dialog blue sheets were helpful in explaining the coverage areas of various databases, but I was shocked at the lack of instruction on the search page itself. If I hadn't known to type "ss" for "start search," for instance, there was nothing on the page that would have let me know that I couldn't just type in my search term. I suppose that there must be training in Dialog for people who pay for the service, meaning that anyone who can log on is already expected to know the basics.
Several of the results looked as if they would apply to using MySpace in libraries, including one about folksonomies and one involving students in Brazil.
I logged off quickly to avoid incurring more charges!
Using Dialog made me realize how difficult searching must have been when librarians had to log on to a remote database and incur charges the whole time. And it must have been especially difficult when searches were done in batch mode, since the patron who made the request wasn't even there to answer clarifying questions or modify the search.
I thought the Dialog blue sheets were helpful in explaining the coverage areas of various databases, but I was shocked at the lack of instruction on the search page itself. If I hadn't known to type "ss" for "start search," for instance, there was nothing on the page that would have let me know that I couldn't just type in my search term. I suppose that there must be training in Dialog for people who pay for the service, meaning that anyone who can log on is already expected to know the basics.
Thursday, March 20, 2008
Competency 6.3: Successive Fractions Search, Lexis
My notes said that you can start a successive fractions search with the broadest search term, so I started searching LexisNexis for "MySpace." I quickly got a screen that said my search had been terminated because it would have resulted in over 3000 hits. I added the term "library" and got 904 hits, many of which had to do with the music industry, for instance because of the phrase "digital music library."
I changed "library" to "public library" and got 109 hits. Then I added the word "teen" and got 26 results.
The top five results were either completely useless or only accidentally helpful - they were community calendar pages from various newspapers that happened to have the search terms in them because, for instance, there's a teen advisory board meeting at the library and some other organization down the page says you can contact them via their MySpace page.
But the tenth hit was a very interesting Boston Globe article by young-adult author Lauren Mechling about how she, as an author, feels about libraries reaching out to teens with the internet, music, and other new technologies. If librarians aren't trying to force teens to read, she asks, will anyone read her books? Her thoughts and her description of her local library portray Library 2.0 changes in a way that I think a lot of newspaper readers can understand.
Mechling, Laura. Come for the Xbox, Stay for the Books. The Boston Globe. 11 March 2007, D3.
I changed "library" to "public library" and got 109 hits. Then I added the word "teen" and got 26 results.
The top five results were either completely useless or only accidentally helpful - they were community calendar pages from various newspapers that happened to have the search terms in them because, for instance, there's a teen advisory board meeting at the library and some other organization down the page says you can contact them via their MySpace page.
But the tenth hit was a very interesting Boston Globe article by young-adult author Lauren Mechling about how she, as an author, feels about libraries reaching out to teens with the internet, music, and other new technologies. If librarians aren't trying to force teens to read, she asks, will anyone read her books? Her thoughts and her description of her local library portray Library 2.0 changes in a way that I think a lot of newspaper readers can understand.
Mechling, Laura. Come for the Xbox, Stay for the Books. The Boston Globe. 11 March 2007, D3.
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
Competency 6.2: Citation Pearl Growing Search, LibLit
For the citation pearl growing search, I started with the article "Web, Library, and Teen Services 2.0" by Kimberly Bolan, Meg Canada, and Rob Cullin in Young Adult Library Services v. 5 no. 2. LibraryLit gave the following subjects for this article:
Web 2.0
Young adults' library services
Internet/Public libraries
Microcomputers/Children's use
Social networks.
I did a new search using "young adults' library services" and "internet/public libraries" and retrieved 289 records, which was way too much - it included every article about every youth librarian who had ever made a web site. I noticed that one of the articles had "electronic games" in their subejcts, so I added that to see what I would find.
That search returned all of two results, both of which looked really interesting:
Mulligan, C, et al. From Playing to Creating. School Library Journal vol. 53, no. 10 (October 2007) p. 36-7
and
Makens, K. Gaming in Libraries 2.0. Young Adult Library Services vol. 5, no. 4 (Summer 2007) p. 27.
I found this search technique to be very useful because I often know there must be articles out there on my subject but can't find them across various databases that have different search terms. I never would have thought of "microcomputers/children's use," for instance, if it weren't for seeing it in the citation of my known item. I'll definitely be using this technique again!
Web 2.0
Young adults' library services
Internet/Public libraries
Microcomputers/Children's use
Social networks.
I did a new search using "young adults' library services" and "internet/public libraries" and retrieved 289 records, which was way too much - it included every article about every youth librarian who had ever made a web site. I noticed that one of the articles had "electronic games" in their subejcts, so I added that to see what I would find.
That search returned all of two results, both of which looked really interesting:
Mulligan, C, et al. From Playing to Creating. School Library Journal vol. 53, no. 10 (October 2007) p. 36-7
and
Makens, K. Gaming in Libraries 2.0. Young Adult Library Services vol. 5, no. 4 (Summer 2007) p. 27.
I found this search technique to be very useful because I often know there must be articles out there on my subject but can't find them across various databases that have different search terms. I never would have thought of "microcomputers/children's use," for instance, if it weren't for seeing it in the citation of my known item. I'll definitely be using this technique again!
Monday, March 10, 2008
Competency 6.1: Building Block Search, ERIC
I used the Expert Search feature of ERIC to perform a building block search on the topic of technology in library teen services. I chose Expert Search because it was more flexible and let me choose my own number of facets rather than limiting me to three. Fortunately, ERIC includes a little "cheat sheet" at the bottom of the Expert Search screen which lists its truncation symbol and the Boolean operators!
The screenshot looks really small in the blog, so in case you can't read the search terms I used, here they are:
kw: librar* and kw: technology and (kw: youth or kw: teen) and ft: fulltext
The word "technology" didn't appear in the abstract of the most interesting result at all (although it did appear as an identifier). If I were doing a citation pearl growing search, this would make me think I should add "internet" as a search term. Once again, the screenshot is really small, so here's the result:
Searching for Educational Content in the For-Profit Internet: Case Study and Analysis
Author: Fabos, Bettina
Publication: 2002-04-00
Description: 61 p.
Language: English
I won't retype the whole abstract, but the reason I thought this article was interesting is that the author surveyed elementary, junior-high, and high-school teachers about how they used the internet. She found that rather than allowing students to use Web 2.0 features to do things like create their own videos (or even their own web pages), teachers almost invariably used the internet as "a kind of library substitute" - students did research by looking things up on the internet in the computer lab instead of looking things up in books in the library. To me, this points out the need for librarians to take the lead in making sure teens are really information literate, by helping them create content on the internet instead of just using it for research.
This search also makes me think that I might need to refine my topic. "Use of technology in library services for teens" might be too broad - do I mean technology that librarians use to reach teens, or technology that teens use in the library, or...?
The screenshot looks really small in the blog, so in case you can't read the search terms I used, here they are:
kw: librar* and kw: technology and (kw: youth or kw: teen) and ft: fulltext
The word "technology" didn't appear in the abstract of the most interesting result at all (although it did appear as an identifier). If I were doing a citation pearl growing search, this would make me think I should add "internet" as a search term. Once again, the screenshot is really small, so here's the result:
Searching for Educational Content in the For-Profit Internet: Case Study and Analysis
Author: Fabos, Bettina
Publication: 2002-04-00
Description: 61 p.
Language: English
I won't retype the whole abstract, but the reason I thought this article was interesting is that the author surveyed elementary, junior-high, and high-school teachers about how they used the internet. She found that rather than allowing students to use Web 2.0 features to do things like create their own videos (or even their own web pages), teachers almost invariably used the internet as "a kind of library substitute" - students did research by looking things up on the internet in the computer lab instead of looking things up in books in the library. To me, this points out the need for librarians to take the lead in making sure teens are really information literate, by helping them create content on the internet instead of just using it for research.
This search also makes me think that I might need to refine my topic. "Use of technology in library services for teens" might be too broad - do I mean technology that librarians use to reach teens, or technology that teens use in the library, or...?
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