The YALSA Institute on Building Teen Communities Online, held Friday, January 19th, saw an overflow crowd of enthusiastic attendees. The first speaker was Audra Caplan, former president of YALSA, now Director of the Harford County Public Library, Maryland. Her role was to give the director’s (principal’s, superintendent’s, etc.) perspective.

Audra began by describing the many barriers librarians cite when trying to implement technology services for young adults, from concerns about resources to basic discomfort in working with teenagers. Next Audra described many of these issues from the director’s point of view. A director must be sensitive to the political climate and composition of the community. Sometimes communities are conservative, yet they love the library. Audra often feels she walks a tightrope (her library receives an average of two challenges a month!). One approach is to add new services without lots of fanfare. Then people gradually learn about new services and fear of the unknown is minimized. In sum, Audra advised: 1. Make choices (you can’t have it all or do everything at once). 2. Don’t blindside your director. 3. Watch how certain types of use can put pressure on the computer network, and always communicate with technology department. 4. Turn lemons into lemonade. If you have rowdy, loud kids, what do you do? Always support the staff, but implement programming, even security, and meet the situation head on. 5. Understand that the director may be very busy. Your top priority is not necessarily the director’s, who is juggling everyone’s top priority and continually putting out fires. Be patient and don’t badger. 6. Be aware of the budget process. There are always restrictions. To buy video games, Audra’s system literally shaved funds off every other materials budget line. When you do ask for funds, make your arguments compelling and have your ducks in a row.

Audra had a number of suggestions for overcoming barriers. 1. First and foremost, create well thought-out proposals. Do your homework. Have statistics and use published research to bolster your case. 2. Directors, principals, and superintendents are often fairly ignorant about technology. Take explanations down to the level that the administrator will understand. Plant your seed first by supplying “for dummies” articles, then tend the seed. Use incentives for reluctant staff (like free mp3 players after attending professional development sessions!). Don’t reinvent the wheel. Use YALSA’s Teen Tech Week materials, YALSA's 30 positive uses of social networking document, and data from the Pew Internet and American Life Project and from the Chapin Hall Center for Children. 3. Figure out how you can make your boss or your local politicians look good. Collaborative efforts are always good. Join up with another library, agency, etc. 4. Find money. Seek out funds from “Buy” grants from local retailers, friends groups, and library foundations. Tell your director before you apply for a grant!

The second speaker was Linda Braun, LEO: Librarians and Educators Online. Her mission was to describe how social technologies help build community. She first demonstrated by (*warning, not pretty!*) recruiting four volunteers to record the song "Fame" on singshot.com, an online karaoke site with sharing features. What makes this a community activity? Everyone knows the song, everyone sings, those singing together form a community, by posting it you are sharing it. You can add other singers in your group to your friends list, share profiles, etc. Communities happen when people share common interests and have opportunities to bond over those interests. Librarians can participate in the communities that teens use to reach those who don’t come into our buildings.

Linda showed us how she created a list of resources for the Institute using the social bookmarking site del.icio.us. She had already added the links Audra spoke about and demonstrated how libraries can build community by distributing login information to a user group so all members of the group can contribute bookmarks. This simple tool connects not only people, but resources (which is a lot of what we’re about). In the school setting, I can imagine students build collaborative online pathfinders as they find resources for research projects.

Next Linda played excerpts from a couple of podcasts, one from a class of middle school students in La Crosse, Wisconsin who described their fears on the first day of 7th grade, and the other from a class that was doing research on arthropods. The teacher also made her own podcast in which she described the year-long process and how she educated the larger community about it (as Audra advised). Class members developed a much tighter sense of community as a result. Linda observed that communities can also be temporary, serve a specific function, or die a natural death when a function is over. It’s okay if things don’t last forever because interests change or services fall in and out of favor. It doesn’t mean the service or community has "failed." For example, in some teen communities, Facebook has become favored over MySpace. One library managed this shift by making a widget in its MySpace page that links to its Facebook page. It’s very important to have policies and guidelines for anything you build collaboratively with teens. Have a policy for who can be "friended," in the same way you have a collection development policy. Customize your online presence. One MySpace page approach doesn’t fit all libraries. You can use the bulletin feature on MySpace to get out a message to everyone in your friends group. Authors and musicians do this and we should too. It's a way to connect to the kids, especially to those who don’t necessarily come in to the library on their own.

Last, Linda spoke about connecting to teens through devices. We are missing a really big boat by not making more use of text messaging. We need to start thinking about how our websites display properly on cell phones. We need to keep acceptable use policies up to date because new devices and services create new issues, particularly in terms of privacy. Pick the tool or service that works for you in your environment at the current moment. You want to build trust. But don’t try to do what you can't do.

Next up were two speakers from My Own Café, of the Southeastern Massachusetts Library System, Vickie Beene-Beavers (Assistant Administrator for Youth Services) and Kathy Lussier (Technology Consultant). Their presentation included a 10-minute video of teen volunteers describing their experiences working on the project.

The basic mission of the My Own Café project is to assist member libraries in their provision of online services to teens. Using grant funding, the system recruited teens to advise on site’s content and design and hired a professional design team and a project manager. The site provides information services, communication services like message boards, some downloadable music from local bands, community and local information, and college and job information. Users can view all information, but must log in with a library card number to use interactive services. Teen moderators monitor the message boards and are heavily involved in decision-making and administrative issues, from establishing conduct and privacy policies to selecting the logo of the service.

Teens feel safe using My Own Café. Vickie reported that in many ways the teen moderators and stricter than librarians would be. They also have a strong sense of ownership in the partnership, particularly as suggestions they make are acted upon. For example, teens are now given the option of selecting different skins (backgrounds, appearances) when they log in. Not all the member libraries have come on board. And it has been harder to reach school librarians, who are working with lots of restrictions. Even though the message boards are heavily moderated, many schools do not allow any such service on their computer networks.

For those who would like to take a look at the full range of My Own Café services, these guest logins are currently available: January – login is guest, password is midwinter; February – login is guest, password is groundhog.

The day concluded with a panel on using gaming to promote community. Panelists were Beth Gallaway, Trainer/Consultant for Metrowest Massachussetts Regional System; Andy Fletcher, (Upper Deck Entertainment); Jean Gardner, YA Librarian and Team Leader for Topeka and Shawnee County Public Library; and Jami Schwartzwalder, recent MLIS graduate and instructor/volunteer on the virtual world Second Life. All agreed that gaming is social by nature, which makes it perfect for community-building efforts. The big take-home message from the panel was to be open to teen interests and to listen, listen, listen. You don’t have to be a gamer yourself, but you do need to listen to what the teen gamers tell you and be aware of basic trends. Games fall in and out of fashion. Certain types of games lend themselves more to community building than others. For example, in MMORPGs (massively multiplayer online role playing games) all participants have to work together to move through the quest. Panelists reported that even when kids have the technology to play a game at home, they come to the library to play with a group. Similarly, even when being competitive, teens help each other get better.

How can we in libraries facilitate the community aspect of gaming? You can provide the wherewithal even if you aren’t a gamer yourself. Programs or collections can support the activities that occur around gaming, like card trading, miniatures, and gaming-related magazines, books, and films. Support a gaming initiative with communication technologies like blogs (check out the comments on the Ann Arbor District Library gaming blog!) and by sponsoring clubs or discussion groups. Capitalize on teens’ tendency to be “format agnostic.” So don’t just put up book displays, but add related content like videos and other formats. Justify what you want to do by connecting adolescent developmental needs to gaming attributes. Recent research on learning has a lot to say about the positive role gaming can play. Gaming has become legitimized in ways not seen before.

All in all, it was a VERY full day and gave participants a great deal to think about.