Teen

In recent years, young adult (YA) fiction has, like its Generation Z audience, turned to social justice issues and activism. At the same time, the discussion of social responsibility in librarianship has begun to include human rights and social justice, especially since public libraries provide education and information about issues of rights and justice. 

For Jennifer's thesis research, she conducted a participatory case study with a co-designed virtual program through the Camrose Public Library. The case study investigated how teen readers engage with the social justice themes in YA fiction, how and if they find these themes useful for understanding and engaging in activism on their own, and the influence of public library programming on these actions. 

This presentation provides an overview of what worked and what didn’t when it came to collaborative program design with teens and provides practical recommendations for young adult librarians who want to implement social justice programming.

Want to build a fun escape room program that appeals to families with children, teens, and adults, but feel like you don’t have the space to make it work? Have you seen pictures from amazing escape room programs in other libraries, but don’t have a dedicated space to commit to a lengthy program? I’ll share tips, tricks, and plans for three different escape rooms we have successfully run that fit (almost) entirely on a book cart and are easy to set-up and take-down. We’ll talk about rooms with doors that don’t lock, different types of puzzles that are easy to use, how to build multiple rooms using the same materials, and ways that participants can adapt these programs for their own library spaces.
 
Presented at the CATS Conference, Kelowna BC, Oct 7th, 2019. 

The Celebrating Girls Celebrating Community program, offered in partnership with Island Health and Hannah Beach of Dandelion Dance, was a long-term program designed to increase the confidence and self-efficacy of teen girls in the Nanaimo community. Between October 2017 and May 2018, a total of 11 girls participated in the project; 6 followed all the way through with the planning, choreographing, and performing of a full length dance performance inspired by their social justice passions and the ways they see themselves in the world. This program gave a group of teens who had never danced - or spent much time in the library! - a safe space to learn how to express themselves, a deep and continuing connection with their library, and a platform from which to create real and meaningful change in their community