Limitations and Advantages: One becomes the Other

Our greatest strengths can also be our greatest liabilities. We certainly found that to be the case during the past two years.

Building size

"We found...that we could make things work--that, in fact, a young adult branch is quite possible and viable."

One of the reasons that Garfield Park was proposed for this YA experiment is that its small size (1450 sq. ft.) renders it too small to be an effective library with more than a single service mission. As we planned the grant, we continually ran into limits of what the building would support, and ways in which the structure could not accommodate some of the more interesting and idealistic concepts of a young adult branch.

Teens want to hang out and talk and be together, but there's no particular space to do that at Garfield Park. On a rainy day near the end of a school marking period, the energy in the building (and sometimes the noise) can be remarkable. Young people are willing to drape over anything and contort into shapes to fit into small areas, but it is hard for a library staff to function in the same environment.

The advantage of its smallness is that staff, teens, and Young Friends all get to know each other very well and learn to work together. On a bad day, it feels cramped--on a good day it feels cozy and friendly like a slightly rowdy family.

Unfortunately, there's no possibility of expanding the number of workstations unless we remove lots of books first. And we've been tempted. With the circulation/information desk and the workstations so close, it is convenient to keep an eye on the homework center while answering the phone or working on reference questions.

The size of the building has also limited our outreach to teens. Word-of-mouth has brought us to full capacity, but then that's probably the sort of advertising that works best with kids. On the other hand, this frustration has been a stimulus for adapting A PLACE OF OUR OWN at other branches.

Technology and Staff

We impressed the YA's mightily with the flexibility, power, and speed of the technology we introduced at Garfield Park. We gained their confidence with our willingness to provide the resources they needed, and we gained their respect by being as open to learning from them as we were ready to teach.

It meant that all the staff had to become mini-system administrators in addition to traditional library workers. This gave us complete control over system operations, the ability to incorporate ideas and suggestions whenever we wished, or to explain exactly why we couldn't.

But it also meant that the same 8-hour shift had to include system maintenance and troubleshooting along with public service duties and routine branch operations. We found that we had not originally allowed enough time for training and training updates. Because we were small, we scrambled and got the training we needed (sometimes from the teens), but if this experience were translated into a larger operation, it would have become a very serious problem, indeed. Without readily accessible technical support, and even with it, time and opportunity for staff training cannot be overemphasized.

Our ability to serve young adults and their siblings and parents is largely dependent on the quality of the staff, and on the depth of their knowledge about both traditional library resources, and contemporary computer resources. Adequate time to train on the new resources has been the greatest barrier we've faced.