I don’t think I’m particularly remarkable. I love my job. I love working with teens. I love finding ways to connect them to their passions and I love to help them create a little space for themselves in our community. I love trying new things. I fight hard to advocate for the teens in my adopted town, and for libraries in general across the board.

Now, so do most people who do this job. I’m no different from librarians near and far in that regard.

So why now? Why a blog? Why another blog by a youth services librarian?

I’ve been doing this Teen Librarian thing for a little while now. I’ve gone from a fresh face doing something relatively new in this little corner of the world to an ‘old-timer,’ as a colleague recently told me. And with that, I’ve been hearing from others asking how I’ve* done it: Create a teen library service from scratch and build it into something vibrant and vital over the past 10 years.

* Really it’s, ‘we’ve’ – what a fabulous group of staff, both Teen Librarians and professionals in other departments and organizations, as well as passionate allies I’ve worked with over the years!

The truth is…I can’t remember it all. I remember a lot, but I’m cursed with a ‘mile-a-minute’ brain (and mouth). We’ve moved so fast and done so much that I’ve come to realize that I need to put it down somewhere. So why not a blog?

So this will be a bit about what I’m doing now, what I’ve done in the past, and what I hope we can accomplish in the future, here in the library and maybe beyond.

I guess I’ve never lacked for ambition.