1. Best
Practices
Assignment
Opinion
Post
#1
Teen-­‐Led
Story
Times
in
the
Library
By
Rebecca
Buckley
LIS
506
Preconceptions
Starting this assignment topic, I really only had my personal experience with
my own Teen-Led Story Time program to go on. I wasn’t sure if I would find
much on the internet or in the databases for similar programming in other
libraries. I know that my sporadic professional journal reading, at least over the
last couple of years, hasn’t turned up much on the topic. I thought that I
wouldn’t find many articles at all and I anticipated having to expand my topic to
more general volunteer opportunities for teens in the library instead. Doing a
basic Google search for Teen-led Story Times, I found very little. I was surprised
to see that a few hits were related to programming for read-alouds FOR teen
audiences. I had previously read some research about how beneficial reading
aloud could be for teenagers in the classroom, for example, but hadn’t heard
about public libraries doing programming like that before. I decided to check the
databases and focused on the Library Literature & Information Science database.
Using keywords like teens, libraries, storytelling, etc., and by expanding searches
by finding similar results on very relevant hits, I was able to find quite a number
of articles on the topic of Teen-led Story Times. Some of the articles were more
recent, others were decades old, but most included some relevant information
and, more interesting to me, some great ideas for programming initiatives.
As I expected (because it has been my personal experience), the articles show
evidence that Teen-led Story Times provide a great benefit to libraries, young
children and especially the teens themselves. According to a vast number of the
articles I read, teens really thrive with library service opportunities and many
really enjoy working with small children as well. Teens get a feeling of
ownership in the library and they get valuable work experience and community
service opportunities as well. Many Youth Services departments in public

2. libraries are under-staffed and young children benefit from having access to
more library staff, even though teens are there in a non-professional capacity.
Many teens are specially trained before working with young children in the
library. Librarians benefit as well because they building relationships with the
teens, providing them with learning opportunities and expanding their
programming services to young children at the same time.
Most of the articles I examined on the topic of Teen-led Story Times focused on
public library initiatives. That was not surprising to me as I have yet to come
across a high school library that is doing what I am doing with my Children’s
Library. I am going to consider writing an article for publication as I think that
other high school librarians might be inspired by the idea. Many other high
schools in the state of Missouri, I know, also house Child Development Centers
and the collaboration between the high school library, the Early Education
program and the local public library would be a great benefit to many.
In my database searching, I found many other articles of interest to me on
student volunteering in the library. I have recently been short-staffed, having
had one of my library assistant positions eliminated this year. I have been
attempting to use student volunteers as much as possible to help fill my staffing
needs. I plan on reading many of the articles I found in hopes of getting some
great volunteer plan implementation ideas. I have student library aides and also
have some of my Student Library Advisory Council students offer to assist from
time to time, but the offers of help are sporadic and sometimes the quality of
work is below par. I look forward to acquiring some ideas for improving my
student volunteer staff by reading some of these additional articles.