Teen Read Week - Developing Collections That Work

My aide and I have been contemplating ideas for Teen Read week.  We are both excited about the theme: “Turn Dreams into Reality.” As we get through Banned Books Week and our Scholastic Book Week, we need to try and remember that TRW is fast approaching.

I particularly enjoyed this article posted by Kylie Peters, “Learning From Teens: Thoughts for Teen Read Week.” She suggests that sometimes we ” forget that some of our greatest resources are the very subjects of our resource-sharing: the teens themselves.” I can be guilty of thinking myself the expert on collection development, choosing “important” books that I think my students should want to read. This article reminds me that some of my very best ideas for purchasing come from the kids themselves.  I have worked hard to create a welcoming atmosphere where students feel very comfortable sharing their favorite books with me. 

She inspired me with a couple of new, relatively simple to execute ideas. I loved her idea of a “Take a Book; Leave a Book” display where students must replace a book that they check out with one of their favorite books from our stacks. I also like the simple idea of leaving genre book-lists around and seeing which ones disappear first.  As soon as I get through the book fair, I will be working to launch these ideas and will be looking for more like them!

Score One For the Library Over Amazon

"But it turns out librarians haven't just been sitting around shushing people while the Internet drove them into irrelevance. More than 90% of American public libraries have amassed e-book collections you can read on your iPad, and often even on a Kindle. You don't have to walk into a branch or risk an overdue fine. And they're totally free."

So says The Wall Street Journal  in its timely article "Why the Public Library Beats Amazon - For Now." The author explored a variety of best seller lists and found that public library e collections have many more of these titles than subscription services like Scribd, Oyster, and Kindle Unlimited. And of course - no monthly fee. The library card is still free! Certainly drawbacks like wait lists and due dates still exist. But - a variety of popular titles, for free should be hard for serious readers to resist.

Because of a grant, I was able to create an fairly substantial e book collection in my library.  Students are pretty excited to be able to check out books on their devices, day or night, in any place that they can connect to the internet.  I am pretty excited because these books are never returned three months late and/or damaged.  While the older students seem to prefer physical books, the junior high kids are loving the accessibility of our e book collection. 

Go libraries!