For some local teens, the Bella Vista Library is a place to make friends as well as to donate valuable volunteer hours. As the teens spend more and more time at the library, the staff find more ways to keep them busy.
It’s a give-and-take relationship. The teens give some of the their time volunteering and spend some of their time enjoying programs. Members of the Teen AdvisoryBoard help plan the programs.
Joni Stine, executive director of the library, said she has a core group of about 12 teens, but she is always recruiting more. Like the preschoolers who attend story time, teens are constantly aging out of the program. She is always looking for ways to get 12- and 13-year-olds interested.
“They’re so creative,” she said about her young volunteers. When she was too busy to prepare for preschool story timerecently, she turned it over to the teens. The younger children look up to the teenagers, so having them at story time is a bonus, she explained.
The library has a large number of retired volunteers, Stine said, and the teens enjoy interacting with them.
“They appreciate their humor and wisdom,” she said, adding that the older volunteers think of the teens as “a breath of fresh air.”
Brandon Ray started volunteering at the librarybecause he loves to read. Recently, he has little time to read, but he still enjoys his Saturday afternoons at the library. He likes to work in the used-books area because he enjoys organizing them.
Sixteen-year-old Anna Sharon is considering a career in library science. She has made some good friends working at the library.
“We’re about to start a real teen book club,” she said, explaining that a group of teen readers has been meeting for a while,but they were never able to agree on a book to read together. A real book club is one where everyone reads the same book and discusses it, she said.
Several members of the group also meet monthly for a writer’s club, Stine said.
Last fall, Stine and the teens had an evening lock-in. She provided pizza and snacks, and the teens brought board games. It was a bonding time for the group, she said.
With the teens’ input,Stine is adding to the library’s collection of young-adult fiction, but there is not very much space for it. It is shelved in a corner of the children’s section. The teens really need a place of their own.
The plans that are under consideration by the library’s board of trustees include a small space dedicated to young-adult fiction and a little space for seating.
“With all the things they’ve done here, they deserve that,” she said.
Community, Pages 10 on 11/07/2012