Tour my new, improved teen area!

I am in the last days of getting everything together for the summer reading program. I run the programs from birth through 18, so it's a lot of work and a huge payoff, too, I think -- I'll be updating about that as it goes along.

After I returned from my vacation, I came back to find one of the things I wanted was most of the way done. It was my goal to expand the teen area, since our space was tiny and cramped, if you remember. Since we're under strict collection standards through the county, we can't weed much. But a little creativity, a lot of man power, and a lot of thought went into making my teen area nearly TWICE the size.

Let me take you on a tour of the new space (see link above for the old):

This is taken from near the reference desk looking in. If you'll remember, the teen section started behind the face-out shelf holding new materials. Now, it also includes the entire range on the left, as well.

Let's get closer.


This is my new books area. It's also where I put the bookmarks I buy or get sent. On the cart on the right are our magazines.


This is a shot of the open space now for the teens -- I pulled the rug across, so it's clearer that the entire space is theirs. I've got some other aesthetic ideas to help, as well.

For now, let's look at the entire new range of shelves and what I was able to do with them:

Starting at this end, I have my Playaways (which we were just able to put out this week in the shifting!). I'm super excited to have them ready for summer reading. The ones in the children's area have been circulating well, and I am hopeful the teen ones do, too.

The next set of shelves holds our teen non-fiction. We have more than this, but this is the browsing collection, rather than the research-type materials. Just below those books are my new reader's advisory tools. You've seen my trifolds before, and now I've got two acrylic holders for them. The bottom set's empty, but between my intern and I (and that lovely grant I got), we'll be filling those up in no time.

Oh, and we made this incredible sign

I pulled up a free vector image I liked from Vector Stock, then added my text. I thought it was eye catching.

Moo-ving on (I know, I know)


This is now where fiction begins. Having 20 some extra shelves was so helpful, and as you can see, I still am staggering how they are sitting on the shelf. The bigger series books, as well as some of the books by one author that have a real "brand" to them (such as Deb Caletti's paperbacks) are also stacked sideways. It actually can take up less room on a shelf.

There's the shelf in its full glory. I LOVE how the teens truly have an entire space now, and it's closed off enough for them (while being open enough to detract any poor behavior).


Now that fiction shifted, these sets of shelves opened up quite a bit more! I think they begin at D now for fiction, and the top shelves, which once held the non-fiction, can now become areas for:


Book displays, like my world travel one.

Program displays, like the one for my author visit. I love this so much!

And a display space for my teens' Lego creations. The top shelf features one of the scenes from AS King's Please Ignore Vera Dietz (the scene where she is reading notes in a tree house), and the bottom features a battle scene of some sort on the right, and the zombie apocalypse murder film house on the left. Really. That's what it was called and what is going on there.

Here's the chair alcove with my posters. Cozy but not too cozy.

More fiction on this side. I wanted to show off where my Post Secret card project cards went. This summer, my teens can earn prizes for creative projects, and I'll be displaying them in all these little nooks around the teen area.

This is the far side wall, also completely full of teen fiction and my big bulletin board. It looks SO nice now, open with room for a little more growth. My bulletin board is sadly no longer covered in that paper and many of the cork tiles are, how to say, jumping ship in the heat. My intern and I will be tackling that project before Saturday's summer reading kick off and you will surely see it here.

I'm so lucky to have gotten this much space, and I'm so eager for the teen to be able to see it and really make it their own space. For such a small library -- we're in a town of under 10,000 with a service population of about 14,000 -- I have a wonderful space and great resources for my teens. I can't wait to see how they utilize them this summer, especially after marathon classroom visits (every 6th - 10th grade class in town, not counting the non-teen kids I saw, too!). But what I'm trying to highlight in posting about this is how easy it is to make a space, even with a small space. We aren't all lucky enough to have incredible spaces, but we can make what we have pop and always aim for just that little bit more.