It takes a lot for a teen to approach a librarian and ask for a recommendation, and you have to make the most of your window of opportunity. (I just attended a Teen/Tween Reader's Advisory workshop yesterday, and this point was reiterated over and over again.) They become frustrated or discouraged faster than younger children and will more often than an adult mumble, "forget it" and go look for something themselves.
A delicate topic can be even worse. The kids want the information quickly and discreetly. Teens who love realistic fiction are often "trying out" the topic as it applies to their own lives, so it's important to have what they need. Fiction quickly becomes dated, and nonfiction is often too preachy, too babyish, or not comprehensive enough.
With a Teen collection, it's much easier for me to keep on top of my titles and know suggestions off the top of my head than it would be if I were in charge of, say, an Easy Fiction collection. My Teen collection, though larger than many, is relatively small. But I do find it a challenge to keep current on certain genres - fantasy and science fiction, in particular - and I don't just get asked questions about Teen books. I work at the Children's Desk, and I get questions about everything from board books for babies to teen romance novels. Keeping up with it all is a little daunting.
I do use a lot of the resources like Novelist, but my favorite "cheat" is Amazon.com. I use both the Listmania and the Suggested Purchases features on that site to fins books to recommend to kids. I'm in the process of working on two projects specifically for teens: one is the Teen Topics Resources (which is my LATI project and which I will go into greater detail about another time) and one is a series of TAC-generated booklists with genres that kids respond to (not just "mystery" or "historical fiction" but more like Listmania: "Coolest Vampire Books" or "Best Love Stories." I'm hoping those will help to fill the gap for our teen services.
Saturday, October 27, 2007
Saturday, October 6, 2007
My Geek Chic
So as one of my LATI assignments (I'm cleaning up "holes" in my work this weekend) I had to take a quiz to test my "Geek Chic."
I pretty much could have told anyone, without spending 2 minutes of my life on a quiz, that I have none. Or none of the technological variety. My geekdom is strictly literary geekdom, not tech geekdom. So it was absolutely no surprise to me to discover that my score was 20, which = "stuck in the last century."
If you've read my "oh, poor me" posts from before about my tenuous relationship with technology, then you know what a lost cause I am. But that's ok. I accept the fact that when this is all over with, I'll know more but use the same. And that's fine with me.
When I was listening to the Del.icio.us podcast, I heard the magic question I want to ask myself: "How do you manage all that information?" (This is a recurring theme in my battle with technology. I can barely manage a set of car keys, a plant, and a child. More than that is really asking a lot.) I'm looking forward to someone who uses this stuff showing me its value for me. I think that's really the bottom line.
The Technerati Tour was interesting, and it sort of made sense to me. I mean, I have a LibraryThing account, and I use tags for it, so I'm familiar with the concept of tagging - I just don't really use it. I mean, I review all my books there and tag them, but I don't search those tags to see what other people read. Maybe I should. In fact, maybe I'll make that my project this week, to search LibraryThing for one of my own tags and see what I come up with. It's a start, I suppose.
I pretty much could have told anyone, without spending 2 minutes of my life on a quiz, that I have none. Or none of the technological variety. My geekdom is strictly literary geekdom, not tech geekdom. So it was absolutely no surprise to me to discover that my score was 20, which = "stuck in the last century."
If you've read my "oh, poor me" posts from before about my tenuous relationship with technology, then you know what a lost cause I am. But that's ok. I accept the fact that when this is all over with, I'll know more but use the same. And that's fine with me.
When I was listening to the Del.icio.us podcast, I heard the magic question I want to ask myself: "How do you manage all that information?" (This is a recurring theme in my battle with technology. I can barely manage a set of car keys, a plant, and a child. More than that is really asking a lot.) I'm looking forward to someone who uses this stuff showing me its value for me. I think that's really the bottom line.
The Technerati Tour was interesting, and it sort of made sense to me. I mean, I have a LibraryThing account, and I use tags for it, so I'm familiar with the concept of tagging - I just don't really use it. I mean, I review all my books there and tag them, but I don't search those tags to see what other people read. Maybe I should. In fact, maybe I'll make that my project this week, to search LibraryThing for one of my own tags and see what I come up with. It's a start, I suppose.
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