Teens (website) - Wellington City Libraries

Author: Wellington City Libraries
Title: Teens
Age range: 13 - 17
Genre: Website
Rating: 1 2 3 4 5

Description: This website from New Zealand has been designed with teens in mind, but does not offer many obvious ways for teens to get involved with helping to influence the content. There is extensive coverage of environmental topics with lots of resources to external information and sites. The teen blog is updated once a day and often more (by library staff), with current events, highlighted collection materials, books on film coverage, new books and music, and video clips, such as a recent one highlighting Earth Hour. Entries on new books often have a brief synopsis of the title posted as well. The blog is colourful and interactive, with videos to click on and lots of links to items in the collection as well as tags to help with browsing (in both list and cloud formats). Plus users can comment on blog posts. The tone of the entries that I perused on the blog are light-hearted and fun, which I think would attract teens and hopefully keep them reading on a regular basis.

One section of the teen area of the library website is called ‘Foundations.’ This includes graffiti, MCing, DJing, and dancing information, but it is difficult to tell how current the content is, as no dates are given. Each section has a spotlight on (and sometimes comments from) a local artist or musician involved in the related activity. This looks like a relevant and fun area for teens to find info about these ‘Foundations,’ but keeping the information current might be a challenge. These topics are very current and if the information gets outdated it could detract from the credibility of the site as a whole.

There is a homework help section of the website, but it’s not immediately obvious because it’s not included in the home page series of highlighted links. It is included at the bottom in a less obvious horizontal list of links, as well as in a drop-down menu across the top under ‘Your library / Teens / Study stop’ – so there are three levels of menu to navigate before finding the study page this way. The coverage of subjects looks pretty basic, though the formatting is attractive once you’ve reached the page. All links go to external homework help websites.

Comments: Overall, this is an attractive teen website. There is a good use of space, without filling the whole page full of text and images. Even with a number of lists of links, archived posts, tags and books lists, the page doesn’t look crammed full of information, which could be off-putting. Some of the content is updated frequently, and some of it is impossible to date, so it is not clear how new it is. This website has a lot of promise and hopefully it will continue to get developed and promoted to teens so that they continue visiting and also perhaps get a chance to contribute in the future. There is an image linking to a page where teens can read about submitting their art work to be included on the site, but this art page is not linked through the regular menus as far as I can see, and so it is difficult to know how much activity is going on around this idea of including teen artist in the website content. It does appear that the library staff care about developing this section of the library website to appeal to teens, which is great!

Date Viewed: 3 April 2009

Ramp – Toronto Public Library

Author: Toronto Public Library
Title: Ramp
Age range: 13 - 19
Genre: Website
Rating: 1 2 3 4 5

Description & Comments: Toronto Public Library’s (TPL) website for teens has great coverage of a lot of relevant topics for teens, from extensive and detailed homework help and resources, to links for entertainment of all sorts, there is enough here for any teenager to find something interesting. TPL also provides a great forum for teens to interact with each other and to contribute to the content of the site. The home page features a book of the week suggestion, and having frequently updated content is crucial to keeping patrons coming back, I think. By providing information related to travel and employment, as well as university life and financial resources, TPL has really created one-stop-shopping for teens looking for information about many aspects of their life and future options. Where possible, TPL also highlights their collection related to the many themes on the site, for example by providing an annotated and illustrated bibliography of travel books that might appeal to teens in their travel section. There is extensive content related to health and fitness for teens, presented in an appealing way. The website comes across as authoritative because they’ve included so much information. I also like the page of ideas for free/cheap date destinations in Toronto!

Another great thing about the website is that there are lots of ways for teens to contribute and show off their creativity. Several branches of the TPL system put out their own zines. TPL is keeping things fun and fresh with lots of updated content and a wide range of ideas for what teens are interested in. This website is fantastic! It provides a great example for other library systems to look to as a guide for providing teens with relevant and interactive content.

Date Viewed: 2 April 2009