New Services for Teenagers - Norfolk Library Service

Like many other authorities Norfolk Library Service has been searching for ways of encouraging and maintaining teenage use of libraries for a long time. We know that teenagers read, and read widely, but frequently that readership is not translated into library membership. The expansion of ICT facilities has encouraged young people to use libraries but we still feel we can reach a wider teenage audience.

We felt that to reach young people more effectively we needed to market our services better and target specific groups of young people. To do this we needed to work in partnership and build on our existing good links with the Youth and Community Service. The links we made with Youth and Community lead us to two years of partnerships with the National Youth Agency and the Youthboox projects.

Youthboox combines the skills of librarians and youth workers to extend the reading opportunities of disaffected young people. The partnership is clear, youth workers know how to reach and work with young people and librarians know about books, reading and how to motivate young readers. A significant function of the youthboox projects is to identify what 'hooks' young people into reading and how those 'hooks' can be mainstreamed. Our first project was short term with a group of disaffected young men who were encouraged to visit the library with their youth worker to use ICT and lnternet sites with a very subtle book strand in the background. Book ownership proved to be the 'hook' that engaged these young men. By spending time talking to them and getting to know their interests and past reading history we were able to give them a book each to keep. We also used magazines and comics to extend their reading patterns and used their knowledge and interests to buy new stock for their local library.

Our second year with Youthboox included projects around young people creating their own graphic novels, looking at a range of existing texts and storylines, using ICT and other media to develop their stories and working with an illustrator to create the final touches. Two members of the group now regularly attend a teenage evening at their local library. The other element of the Youthboox project was around working with small groups of young people and identifying books and texts which related to specific themes and needs and enabling them to work through some of their problems by using books and sections of text. Some of the themes we covered were health, relationships and equal opportunities. Some of the group produced story-boards using text from identified books and although not many books were borrowed the young people clearly identified with specific themes and sections of the text.

From our Youthboox experience it became clear that we needed a different range of staff, with specific skills, identifiable areas in libraries developed by the young people themselves and to work more frequently with young people on their own territory.

An opportunity to develop this work further came about through Norfolk county Council's Public Service Agreement. A Public Service Agreement is a partnership between a local authority and the Government in which there is an agreement to improve key outcomes more quickly and to promote a higher standard of service than would otherwise be the case. The Library Service submitted a successful proposal for one of these outcomes in which it agreed to increase library and learning provision to young people at risk of social exclusion.

The three year project is focussed on five libraries in Norfolk serving urban areas with below average literacy and numeracy levels. The towns are Thetford, Great Yarmouth, King's Lynn, Earlham and Ayisham. Five part-time project workers have been appointed to do outreach work and to promote the project to young people. Funding has been provided to increase the library opening hours at the libraries by up to 6 hours per week to offer youth-targeted learning activities to address educational attainment, lifeskills and employment opportunities. A small amount of funding was also allocated to a group of young people in each area to involve them in the design and delivery of the services that are targeted at them.

The first step was to set up a focus group in each area. At Earlham Library six students from the local high school formed the focus group. The group were given a budget of £1,000. None of the young people were current library users and they all had very definite ideas about what changes they would like made to the teenage area. In the end they asked for the walls of the area to be painted lime green and blue, some brightly coloured noticeboards, bean bags and a PlayStation console. The group also chose a current late evening as their youth session. These changes are now in place and the sessions have been running since September. The young people come into the library to listen to music, read the magazines, use the IT facilities and to do homework. Once the evenings are more established the intention is to encourage the young people to come up with some ideas for events in the library and for them to manage them. Other focus groups have chosen slightly different furniture for their libraries. At Thetford Library the young people used the funding to buy a sofa, coffee table and bean bags for their teenage area.

Another aspect of the project is to encourage groups of young people to visit the library and to use the library services. The project workers have contacted schools and local organisations such as the Visiting Teachers Service, Pupil Referral Unit, Travellers Education Service, Youth Service and Princes Trust and these groups have been coming into the library for lnternet taster sessions and an introduction to the library services. It was clear from the outset that many of these young people were not members of the library and weren't aware of the resources available. It is hoped these young people will then come back in their own time to access the library services.

Caroline Groom
Norfolk Library and Information Service
  
(Autumn 2002 Easterner)