The YA nerd factor...

Last week, YALSA the ALA's Young Adult Library Services Association, held the inaugural Young Adult Literature Symposium.

I was recently reading Melissa's post at Pop Goes the Library (from whom I recently acquired the book of the same name, and it's got some brilliant ideas in it - I highly recommend!) about Fandom and YA Literature, which reminded me of an ongoing thought that I've had lately.

From my observations, many public libraries try to market themselves to Young Adults by attempting to be "cool", and ignore their strongest branding, and therefore there strongest opportunity of patronage of young adults. And that's books and reading.

I was recently talking to a C&YS librarian, and asked her what the proportion was with the way that she split up her time between developing services for preschoolers and children, and services for young adults, and her response, quite defensively, was along the lines of "You've worked in public libraries. You know what young adults are like. It's more of a priority to focus most services on storytime and other early literacy programs, as well as school holiday programs for primary school children. We have X-boxes for the teenagers."

Now, it strikes me that trying to make libraries "cool" to attract teenagers, is a bit like bike stores trying to make their bikes amphibious to attract fish.

And, you know what, I really don't mind that libraries aren't cool. Because there are a lot of kids out there who aren't cool either. There are a lot of kids out there who are keen readers, but would never use their public library, nor would they subscribe to their public library's blog. Why would they, when there is the fandom community that provides all of their nerdy needs? However, I think this an awesome opportunity for libraries to come on board, and explore the world of fandom. Get your nerd on in the library, and host fanzine-writing workshops, or dress-up/cosplay photo-shoots, or film screenings, or writing slashfiction... the options are endless. Even better, find the fansites, and get in touch with local literary fans, offer to host events at the library, and let them run the event and show you want they want to do!

You know it will work, because in the past, every public library has jumped on the fandom bandwagon with Harry Potter. Guess what, there are plenty more fans out there, for a wide range of literature, and I guarantee that it will bring in just as many teens as your X-boxes, but they will actually borrow your books as well.

(Note: I don't have any problem with gaming in libraries. I think it's great that they cater for all young people in the community... this is more to do with the false anxiety that librarians often seem to have, where they think that "teenagers don't read anymore". Yes, they read - they're just not using your library.)