Comment on Reaching Forward 2010: Hyperlinked Services for Young People Slideshow

As I watched this slide show, "Reaching Forward 2010: Hyperlinked Services for Young People" by Michel Stephens, I was thinking of all the ways that school librarians could utilize hyperlinked services in their libraries.

The slide show talked about letting go of control and work with teens to create places (and staff) that are "welcoming, enabling and inspiring to young adults. connecting to students/users/teens in their spaces, be it physical or virtual. This includes allowing games, food & drink and cell phones in the library. It also means creating collaborative physical spaces - round tables, comfy chairs, cool events, plenty of computers. Create a place where teens can give feedback and make sure that librarians/staff are responding to the feedback and really taking into consideration their suggestions.

Another thing that is more geared to public libraries is to "embrace out of school time", where staff and librarians are trained to be "welcoming and supportive of youth". Could school libraries stay open after school, and be available as long as there are other activities happening on school grounds?

Lastly, the presentation discussed creating and engaging students via in-library games, posters, social networking worlds using tools such as flickr, polls, podcasts, delicious, etc.

Final thoughts on "What we can do"
* Don't be afraid to change
* Know it's ok to fail
* Involve your YA's every step of the way
* Be human
* Imagine
It may be difficult to incorporate some of these tools into the school library, especially if social networking sites are banned at school or the internet has filtering software.