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.

Bulletin board switch up

Remember when I made that Cybils bulletin board? Yep. I just got around to changing it, months later. I didn't do anything spectacular, but I like it. There are a couple things I plan on tweaking, but here it is. The theme? What's going on in the teen department now and what's coming up soon (this is because our teens are participating in a teen tech week program in the department for the next two weeks, and this will give them a heads up -- and keep your eyes here for more on that program soon):


That's the middle of the board -- we call our teen area "18 & Under @ APL" and since that's the motto I'm using on one of the summer reading promotional items. I am such a huge fan of the teen tech week poster this year, too. The bright green and the robot (!!!) totally speak to teens. That will be sticking around for a while.

There's a more head-on shot. The font's ganked from 1001fonts.com, and I printed each letter at 300 point.


And to the left, a feature on my high school book club. That image? One of my teens made that as the club's mascot, so I laminated it and popped it up to highlight it. Font again yanked from 1001fonts.com and blown up. Here's some more of that side of the board:


Some of the photos of our meetings, as well as one of our teen's cover redesigns (isn't it amazing?) and pictures of the books we've read.


So then on the other side of the poster are photos of past events (like our masquerade ball) and images for our upcoming events.




I want to jazz up this side a little bit more, which I plan on doing with photos from the teen tech week event as soon as it's over.

Now for the (somewhat) full effect:


I'll probably leave this up until summer reading, which I've got some ideas cooked up for already. I don't think the background will be black forever.

My teen space

I've got a very unique teen space to share. I haven't photographed our huge bulletin board, since that'll be for another post shortly, but I thought I'd give you a glimpse into creative space.


This is the "entrance" to the teen space. It's shaped like an L, which this part being the bottom part of the L. The shelving you're looking at is our new books. They're only things published 2009 or sooner and acquired in the last three months. I go up there every day to face out new titles and spruce it up a bit. The shelf on wheels next to it houses our magazine collection.

Rounding the corner:

Our top shelves on the left have our popular teen non-fiction, as well as a suggestion box and a huge box of bookmarks. I don't believe it keeping bookmarks in my office; I like putting them out for any time. I've had a couple fabulous authors send me bookmarks, too, which get to live there, too (and I always pop one in the book, too). I have a love/hate relationship with that water poster, too. It might not last too much longer there. And the closet you see is a storage closet for our cleaning crew, so nothing exciting.

A little more face-on:


We have a chair and rug to brighten the space up. Above this photo, which you can't see, is the Jacob READ poster, hanging from the ceiling (you can see it in the very first photo). Above the chair is an awesome poster with the actors in Simone Elkeles's Perfect Chemistry book trailer. We serve a huge hispanic population, so having a poster with very attractive Latino guys was a must have, in my book.

As far as shelving, I like to keep it mixed up a bit. Some are shelved left and some right, and some are actually just stacked. It gives the shelving a little more personality. On the very bottom is the embarrassingly small audiobook collection for teens. I've recently purchased about 50 new audiobooks and 20 playaways for teens, so you can bet this will change!

Then, there's this entire back wall of shelving, too, which makes up the long part of the L shape:


We have the entire back wall for teen books, too. The shelving is built into the walls, so there's not too much flexibility in terms of shelving. You can see in the middle my heating unit and the small shelf above it where I put up my displays. I face out books on each shelf in different places for the teen appeal factor.

And the big black corkboard I plan on taking advantage of. Right now, my coworker's daughter made a display which impresses the heck out of me: she drew characters out of a number of popular teen fiction and has a "Guess who I am?" going on with it. Characters included Katniss, Katsa, Bella, Harry Potter, and a bunch of others. I think my next display up there will be all about the Cybils. It's just finding the time.

I don't have too much more room to grow, but grow I will. I'm just going to have to get creative.

Do you have photos of your teen spaces? I'd love to see realistic spaces -- not the kind that get featured in books or journals. I want the kind that happen when you don't have money to spend on new furniture, shelves, or other gadgets.