Friday afternoon humor

Have a great weekend...












...and drive carefully!

reassuring news about online socializing

The New York Times featured an article this week that has reassuring news for parents (and other adults) concerned about teens obsessive online communications, thanks to a study from the MacArthur Foundation:

Teenagers’ Internet Socializing Not a Bad Thing
By TAMAR LEWIN
Published: November 19, 2008

“It may look as though kids are wasting a lot of time hanging out with new media, whether it’s on MySpace or sending instant messages,” said Mizuko Ito, lead researcher on the study, “Living and Learning With New Media.” “But their participation is giving them the technological skills and literacy they need to succeed in the contemporary world. They’re learning how to get along with others, how to manage a public identity, how to create a home page.”

Thanks Penni for sharing this!

Morgue Files

I've just discovered Morgue Files, described as the "Public Image Reference Archive." Content is uploaded for public use - for free - and they only thing they ask is that the photographer is credited. These are usually high resolution images, something that isn't the norm on the internet - not for public use that I've found.

Seems like a useful site to know about. Goes along with the awesome Smithsonian Images and the Library of Congress' Flickr photostream (though not all of the last two are in the public domain).

(photo by Zach Carter)

Even the Canadians like teen gaming!

Ok, this is pretty much a fluff article, but it's nice to see friendly opinions about gaming in libraries.

I liked this sentiment: "Public libraries are, after all, a community's living room."

The protein of the article: "Video games are a means of drawing older children and teenagers into libraries at a time when they might be less likely to do so. Jane Venus, manager of children and teen services for the Ottawa Public Library, notes that many video games, like books, are beneficial to young minds. Older minds too. When video games were introduced to Ottawa libraries on a trial basis, they became popular with seniors during the day and with teens in the evening. When they were done playing, some teens stayed around the library and read books."

Brilliant author in Seattle Thursday

If you haven't had a chance to hear M.T. Anderson speak and are free Thursday night, I highly recommend scooting down to Seattle to check him out. He will be talking about the second book in The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing series...a series I hesitated to check out due to daunting language, until shamed by a precocious 7th grader into reading it. Great stuff.

Thursday • November 6 • 7pm
M.T. Anderson
The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Volume II: Kingdom on the Waves (CANDLEWICK)
Reading & Book Signing
Seattle Public Library, Central Branch, 1000 Fourth Avenue, Seattle

Who can be the most silent in the library?

I think this has to be one of the funniest things I've seen in a while. I'm thinking that it could be a fun program, with a few modification (ditch the slap machine, and maybe the old man...)

Nancy Werlin in Bellevue this Sunday

This Sunday, October 26, 2008 at 5:30pm at the Bellevue
Regional Library award winning author Nancy Werlin will deliver the
2008 Kim Lafferty Lecture. Nancy has been a National Book Award Finalist and an Edgar Award Winner. Her newest book Impossible has received four starred reviews.

Kim was a young adult librarian whose dedication to teens and to books, both professionally and personally, was profound and unwavering. She had a special connection with children and teenagers and put that talent to good use as a teen services librarian for King County Library System. Kim was also a strong advocate for intellectual freedom and fought strenuously for the right of individuals to choose their own reading material. Kim died of ovarian cancer in 2001.

teen library makeovers

Kathleen sent me this cool article about some Montgomery County libraries that got great and fairly simple makeovers for their teen areas. It also talks about how the designers worked with the teens to do this. Perhaps an area of community partnerships we might consider exploring?

The Library Teen Scene (Shh . . . )

Now, wouldn't it be nice if reporters would stop putting Shh into everything library related?

a cool non-profit to share with teachers

DonorsChoose.org is a cool website that helps teachers connect with donors who want to make a difference by sponsoring small classroom projects, such as book and equipment donations.

They also allow people to set up memorial funds and gift registries!

This could be a great support for doing collaborative projects with your schools.

Video games, simply bait for readers?

Nothing terribly new here, but a good summary of the latest arguments for (and against) video games and literacy skills:

The Future of Reading: Using Video Games as Bait to Hook Readers
Publishers, authors and even libraries are embracing video games to promote books to young readers.

Texting explosion

According to this article from the New York Times, text messaging passed up phone calls made from cell phones at the end of 2007, and from the looks of things, it will be double soon!

Letting Our Fingers Do the Talking
By ALEX MINDLIN
Published: September 28, 2008

Teenagers ages 13 to 17 are by far the most prolific texters, sending or receiving 1,742 messages a month, according to Nielsen Mobile. By contrast, 18-to-24-year-olds average 790 messages. A separate study of teenagers with cellphones by Harris Interactive found that 42 percent of them claim that they can write text messages while blindfolded.

How can we respond to this? I think it is time we started offering updates to teens by text message. Is we set this up as an option on our website, what choices do you think we should offer? Program reminders? New posts on their blog? If you were a teen, what would you want?

Squeeky clean fairy tales

There is a good article in The Boston Globe today about the sanitizing of fairy tales:

Fear of fairy tales
The glossy, sanitized new versions of fairy tales leave out what matters: the scary parts
By Joanna Weiss
September 21, 2008

Admittedly, this is nothing new and fairy tales are always evolving. I remember reading a collection of traditional fairy tales in third grade, and being shocked that the stepsisters in Cinderella were mutilating their feet to try and fool the prince. Certainly changed my view of things! Any more, when young girls come in asking for Cinderella, or Beauty and the Beast, etc...I always ask if they are looking for the Disney version right away. Too many years I tried to trick them into trying other versions, and 90% of the time they really only wanted the packaged princess.

Where do you see the shift, between kids who only want the squeaky clean Disney version of things, and teens who want the raw, disturbing fairy tales and their contemporary retellings? Are we softening things too much for children, leading to greater rebellion and distrust as teens? Or is society just adapting to trying to preserve innocence in a media saturated society?

I wonder what the other 3% are doing?

Survey: 97% of American youth play video games

The survey found that while young Americans don't necessarily play the same thing, nearly all of them -- girls included -- play video games of one kind or another.

And they don't just play by themselves. Nearly two-thirds play video games to socialize face-to-face with friends and family, while just over a quarter said they play with Internet friends.

"It shows that gamers are social people," says Amanda Lenhart, a senior researcher at Pew who led the report on the survey. "They communicate just as much. They spend time face-to-face, just as much as other kids. They e-mail and text."

Despite what some people might hope for, there's no going back. Gaming is a way of life for American youth. But as we know, it isn't all bad!

gaming and scientific thinking

Another encouraging article about great skills teens are building playing video games:

How Videogames Blind Us With Science

At one point, Steinkuehler met up with one of the kids who'd built the Excel model to crack the boss. "Do you realize that what you're doing is the essence of science?" she asked.

He smiled at her. "Dude, I'm not doing science," he replied. "I'm just cheating the game!"

Of course if they realized that their "cheating" was actually the scientific method, it might not seem half as fun ;)

A Teacher on Assigned Reading: "We're Teaching Books That Don't Stack Up"

Ok, I'll be honest, this article is directed toward teachers, and is written by a high school English teacher, but as it deals with how teens feel about the literature they are assigned in school. I think it's worth a read.

'"Butchering." That's what one of my former students, a young man who loves creative writing but rarely gets to do any at school, called English class. He was referring to the endless picking apart of linguistic details that loses teens in a haze of "So what?" The reading quizzes that turn, say, "Hamlet" into a Q&A on facts, symbols and themes. The thesis-driven essay assignments that require students to write about a novel they can't muster any passion for ("The Scarlet Letter" is high on teens' list of most dreaded). I'll never forget what one parent, bemoaning his daughter's aversion to great books after she took AP English Literature, wrote to me: "What I've seen teachers do is take living, breathing works of art and transform them into dessicated lab specimens fit for dissection."'

Strange, that's exactly how *I* felt in high school...

alarming report on teen girls

The YWCA has released a report called Beauty at Any Cost, which contains a lot of very disturbing information about the health, financial and the obsession with looks are costing the teen girls and women of America.

A discussion guide and non-fiction booklist can be found here.

Here are some recent fiction books on eating disorders, as well:

Looks by Madeleine George
Massive by Julia Bell
Perfect by Natasha Friend
More Than You Can Chew by Marnelle Tokio
Skinny by Ibi Kaslik

Any titles you would add if we were to do an eating disorders list?

how friendly is too friendly with teens?

One of the great challenges of working with teens is finding ways to show you care, to reach out, and to make connections...all while maintaining appropriate boundaries. These boundaries are important in helping teens develop into healthy adults, and when properly enforced they provide a sense of dependability and trust that is incredibly important for those of us trying to make a positive difference in their lives.

This article brings up some interesting points about friending kids online. Clearly MySpace and Facebook are wonderful places to connect with teens in an environment they are comfortable in, and I know many people who have had much success in these areas. But where is the line?

Online student-teacher friendships can be tricky
By Mallory Simon

CNN

"As an educator there is a line of demarcation between you and your student," Keith said. "It's a line that you cannot come close to, let alone step over. You've got to establish it from Day One and say, 'I'm not your buddy, I'm not your friend, I'm just your teacher.' "

As librarians, we have a slightly different position. We are authority figures, but not teachers. Where do you feel our line should be? How do you establish this line with your patrons? Have you ever been in a situation where it has been crossed? What did you do?

using texting to advertise to teens

This is something that has come up in conversations with teen librarians a number of times, but this article really hammers home the effectiveness and value to this approach:

Retailers know texting is the totally best way to reach teens
By Mark Albright

What do you think? I'm hoping in phase two of the Sno-Isle Teens: Your Library website we will have a form for teens to sign up for text notification.

How could libraries best use this? What sort of guidelines should we develop to insure the most interesting and effective communications?

looking for a fun activity for teen meetings?

Katy M. from the Selah (WA) Library suggested TAGAD-L trying pipe cleaner pictionary! I think this sounds like lots of fun.

What are some activities that your teens like to do at advisory board meetings and such?

a great response to a book challenged

I assume some of you have already seen this response to a book challenge as it has been making its way around the blogosphere for a few weeks, but I found it inspiring and a wonderful reminder of one of the many reasons we choose to work in public libraries. It would be a good addition to our training on intellectual freedom. Hooray for Mr. LaRue!