Evaluate & Prioritize

Before you set out asking for help, you need to have a clear assessment of your current services and clear goals about where you would like your program to be. For example, are there any events no longer well attended that you could cancel or reschedule? Are there specific services you may or may not yet offer that are particularly high in demand? Are there any other community groups that provide similar services? If so, and there is a need for more of the same, you could benefit from their experiences and emulate, or if there is not enough demand to duplicate, let the other group handle that service, thereby leaving your staff more time to focus on other duties.

Ask the Kids

After you have evaluated your services, put your evaluation to the test. Teen advisory boards are great, but so are similar opportunities for elementary school aged children. Form a kids’ council, and find out what materials and programs the kids want. This may help you streamline your services. Also ask them how they would put together the events they suggest. They will definitely be excited that you want their opinions. Of course you may get several silly ideas, but you will likely get many practical ones as well. Have them help take responsibility for what they want. If you lack funding, have them help raise it. They can be the help you need and have fun doing it.

Donations/Collaborative Events

Even the most well funded and staffed library cannot do everything alone. Partnerships with other community organizations are vitally important. Donations and partnerships are easiest to achieve for particular goals or events, often you will be surprised what you can accomplish by taking a mere 5-10 minutes of sharing a well thought out plan with a potential business partner.

example: You want to have a party to celebrate the new Harry Potter book, but you don’t have the staff or as much funding as you would like to host a grand event. You do have a large meeting/party room, know what activities/performers you would like and can perhaps pay for or get half of the money from your friends group. Go to a local bookstore with your ideas. Surely they will be thinking of a party of their own, but perhaps they do not have the space or want to clean up the mess. You could host a joint event at the library, the bookstore could spare some staff and part of the funding, and they could set up a table to sell copies of the book at midnight.

Volunteers

Volunteers are not always available on a regular basis of course, but even sporadically they can be invaluable. They can prepare crafts for storytimes, shelve and shelf read of course, help decorate the children’s area, be general chaperones for specific events and more. Where can you find volunteers?

• Boy/Girl Scout Troups – Older children may be able to help with an event for younger children or with preparing materials for Summer Reading. Troop leaders may be willing or know other adults who would be willing to help with events as well.
• Chamber of Commerce – Many businesses encourage or require their employees to perform a set amount of hours of community service, and asking through the chamber is a great way to get the word out if you need help.
• Colleges/High Schools – Many college students and high school students in the National Honor Society are required to fulfill community service hours. If your library is not already an option for them, see if you can be added to their list.
• Other Library Staff – Staff members who are not designated to work in children’s services may still enjoy being involved in programs once in a while.
• Parents/Regular Patrons – Parents or patrons who already regularly attend library events may be willing to help you host, set up or clean up after events.
• Teen Advisory Board – Teens might perform a drama or puppet show for younger children or be willing to help out in other ways, especially if you can reward them with food or an event of their own choosing.

Please feel free to email Keri (kweston@marmot.org) or add your own resources and experiences to this page. The more we all share, the more we will all benefit.

• Hello to everyone. I'm Carol Edwards and work at Douglas County Libraries.** I wrote an article awhile ago about this very thing. It appeared in SLJ July 2001 under the title "Hi, My Name is "Jo." I have worked with too many wonderfully dedicated and hard working youth professionals who simply worked until everything was done no matter what the cost. They were always asking, "How do we get more resources? More staff? more funding? more space, help, etc?" It's been my experience with administration is that they will respond to requests for more resources when they can be shown what they will get. If everything you want to do is already being done (sometimes at huge cost) then there's little reason to agree to hire more staff, give more funds, etc.

I really think that we MUST constantly evaluate what we're doing and make sure we're operating at peak efficiency, and without pushing staff to a burnout factor. Constant turnover of youth services staff doesn't serve libraries well either. Being able to apply for funds, train volunteers, work with partners is critical to increasing our ability to reach more children effectively.

Personally, I have decided that school age children are generally over-programmed. I try to think how I can partner with the groups they are already involved with, and also find the activities and events that will appeal to those kids who are not overwhelmed with too much stuff already.

I also love those programs, events, or interactive games that don't take place at a particular time or place. I've had contests for writing and art that accompany a reading program that can be turned in at any time. I've put up a scrabble game and drawn the letters, letting each kid fill in a form with their best guess as to what will have the most points. I think we had a dollar coupon from the drugstore as a weekly prize, and we posted winner's name and photos each week on the website. Guess How many in a Jar contests are always fun, and I have always had more kids enter that kind of contest than show up for a craft program. If you have any math books that help kids estimate, a nice display can accompany the jar. You'll be amazed what that does to the circulation of those titles.

Putting the kids to work in the library through adopt-a-shelf programs is another way to have kids become engaged with the library. The kid who loves baseball is going to do a finer job of keeping those books in order that anyone else. Make sure they have a spot to put something on display each time they work with their recommendation and you've got great reader's advisory service too.

I used to work at a system that had almost no funds for reading programs and we tried hard to think of incentives that we could afford. We discovered that a simple bookplate was a great one. We asked the kids to write on the front why they loved a book, and on the back they put the title. We put those bookplates into the books they loved. Imagine "Jessica" by Kevin Henkes with a book plate inside inside with a printed lead-off that says, "I think you'll like this book because" and followed by a child's writing "it makes you not lonely." That actually happened, and I can tell you that the other kids look for books with these bookplates when they're browsing. It does have a downside- It's very hard to weed books with bookplates!

I'm sure that all the easy answers have been used already. Youth services people are incredibly smart. However, I think we're sometimes too busy doing to focus on how we can do better. I got some heartfelt letters from staff who clearly felt abused, and I wonder how often that happens. By supporting each other we can definitely help. Carol Edwards, Head of Youth Services, Philip S. Miller Library, DCL Castle Rock, CO