Friday, October 17, 2014

Floating Library Collection

Yesterday, I had the honor to present on a panel at the Massachusetts Library System's 6th Annual Teen Summit. If you are near the Worcester, MA area and work with teens, I highly recommend that you check out their website and stay tuned for their summits in October. (See below about the other sessions.) The positive feedback I received on my presentation encouraged me to post about it here.

MLS asked me to talk about my Floating Fiction collection, which I do with the local high school, but really, it works everywhere for any population. Want to check out book club reads to commuters at the train station? Done. Want to check out books to the kids stuck at the military base? Sure can. Want to check out materials to the homeless living at the local hotel? Not a problem.

It does not take a lot of time and it is free to do!

1. Make a Google Account.
2. Make a copy of my Google Form and update it.
3. Make a generic "Floating Collection" library card and then check your books out on it.
4. List these books on the Google Form for checkout.
5. Save the form URL on your laptop.
6. Go to the new location and start checking in/out books on this form to your patrons!

For more information and details, check out my handout.

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The topic of the summit was the New Basics and there were great presentations about:

* Stating from Scratch: My 18: Month Quest to Fill the Library with Teens, Convert my Colleagues, and Keep My Sanity
* Capturing the Elusive Teenager: The Teen Artists Coalition of Cape Cod
* Teen Career Fair in the Library
* Connecting through Clubs: Nerdfighters at the Library
* Teen Study Week

The handouts are posted on the left.  People are doing great things with teens, a population that seems to be regularly be under-served.

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