I love the Largo Teen Room...I Swear!

During my spring break visit with the in-laws at their winter retreat in Largo, Florida, (near Tampa) I checked in on the class blogs because yes, by the middle of the week, I was sort of getting antsy about what was going on in my real life. I got inspired by Baily’s blog post about the teen room she visited in Arizona. It reminded me that I should see what a Florida library had to offer its teens. I was actually expecting a lot, because I read somewhere last year that many of the top public high schools in the U.S. are in Florida, and in particular, the Tampa Region. To me, it seemed that if one public service was flourishing for this age group, that other public services like the library would be as well.

And as it happens, the city of Largo has just built a new library. Now I knew I had to go see it since I wanted to confirm what I predicated I would see: a Borders/Barnes and Noble-inspired public facility. I was not disappointed. The brochure I got had an introduction from the library director that expressed her hope that the new library would become “the living room of the community.” Judging by my impression, the building design affords this town every chance, from the café set up at the main entrance to the large amount of sofas and sitting areas placed throughout, the Largo Public library was inviting and relaxing as any carefully created living room.

But! (there’s always a but). My first impression of the outside of the facility was marred by the jarring sight of a police officer taking away a young person in handcuffs. My mother-in-law, always a sucker for the salacious, asked some kids sitting on a bench watching the proceedings if they knew what was going on. They said they heard from someone else that this person was being arrested for trespassing. I refused to inquire so that’s all I know. But it seemed a sad sight, and not a very welcoming one.

Upon walking in and spying the previously mentioned café, I saw two pierced and eye-liner-ed emo kids (a boy and a girl) sitting at a table. I introduced myself, explained why I was visiting, then asked them if they liked the library, and the teen room in particular. They said they loved both. However, when I asked them if they felt welcome there, they said, “No, we get yelled at a lot.” Then they both said they don’t care, they come anyway. I admired the pluck, but not knowing exactly why they were getting yelled at, I didn’t commiserate. Maybe I should have asked, but I didn’t feel like taking up anymore of their time. Turns out I would get a possible clue later, anyway.

On to the teen room upstairs. By anyone’s standards, this is a fantastic-looking teen room. It was spacious, affording lots of different social scenarios: cozy, private areas with bean bag chairs, a meeting room, a work room behind the circ desk, a bank of six PCs with flat-screen monitors (all being used at around 4:30 on a Monday), tables with stools. The color scheme was a royal purple with different shades of brown throughout for contrast color. Very Starbucks-like. There were lots of Manga posters (Fruits Basket!) and photo collages of past Teen Room events.

I met with an assistant named Elaine. She was very proud of the new room and gave me a tour. The Teen Room runs lots of programs, the average attendance is about 20 kids, which impressed me. I later got a possible clue about what the teens get “yelled at” for when Elaine mentioned it had been a hard day, attitude wise with the kids, and that she had thrown out ten kids for “cussing.”

This teen room had a two large shelves loaded with Manga, and a wire rack loaded with PG-13 and under movies. Both items had a yellow sticker with YA written in red. There was also another four-sided wire rack holding pocket-size paper backs. The rest of the teen collection was just outside the physical teen room space, near the reference space.

This seemed like a good use of space-the popular Manga and YAL paperbacks inside, the permanent collection nearby.

As for Overdrive content, it’s clearly early days for this library. The teen room assistant confessed, abashedly, that she knew nothing about it. I went over to reference and asked if she had any teens requesting instruction, or otherwise expressing any interest in downloadable content. She said in her experience that had not been any. Then I looked at the available Overdrive content at the library’s website. There were a total of seven titles, only three were fiction, the rest were language instruction. It was not clear at all why these were exclusively young adult. So, there you have it, not a lot of demand, perhaps, because there’s practically nothing available that’s labeled Young Adult. There were 94 titles in the adult fiction, however.

I will bring the brochure and other materials from the Largo Public library created to keep teens posted about library events just for them. I will also bring in a six-page publication created entirely by teen patrons, Metro Largo.