Connect for Kids

My local branch library is a world populated primarily by the quite young and the decidedly older. Colorful waves of kids ebb and flow from the children’s section, stepping around retirees and job seekers.

But according to a recent report from Chapin Hall Center for Children, about 25 percent of library patrons these days are teens – even though libraries typically devote fewer resources to them than to any other age group.

The report, New on the Shelf, is an assessment of a four-year project of the Wallace Foundation that funded youth development programs in nine library systems serving predominantly low-income communities. The foundation hoped to find evidence that libraries could help prepare teens for success in school and work – while making libraries more responsive to teens and more connected to their communities.

Overall, the reports’ authors concluded, libraries do have the potential to be powerful partners in youth development – but that creating and sustaining successful programs is “complicated, time-consuming, and expensive.”

Read full story:

http://www.connectforkids.org/node/3008