LISNews: Librarian News

Two Nicholasville librarians are fired for not allowing a kid check out a book. The women say the book contains pornographic material inappropriate for children.

The two women say they were fired last month when they wouldn't let a young girl check out a book from The League of Extraordinary Gentleman series. Now, both women say they're less concerned with their jobs and more concerned with keeping material like this out of children's hands.
[Thanks Dan!]

Teens get a voice in how Dakota County libraries can serve them
At a time when teen interest in the libraries is surging -- Dakota County saw its young adult circulation numbers rise 11 percent this year, even when excluding the new Robert Trail Library -- the county library system launched the Rosemount group and two others in August. The goal: to build even more interest among teens by giving them a voice in decisions about book selection, programming and even interior design.

Anastasia posts on Y Pulse Blog: "At 37, apart from the sprinkling of parents accompanying their teens, I think we may have been the oldest people in the theater. My husband seemed proud that he stayed awake while the pierced, teen guy sitting next to him crashed midway through the movie. I would say the average age of the audience was 16-17 — "Harry Potter teens" — who have, like the stars of the films, grown up reading the books and watching the movies.

In a way I was jealous of these teens for having such a beloved series of books and being able to experience them on so many platforms — the movies, online fan communities and next year, the amusement park. Even though I read fantasy as a teen (A Wrinkle In Time, The Hobbit), there was no well-oiled multi-media/multi-platform machine in place to create a universe on the scale of Harry Potter. -- Read More

Interesting story at Read Write Web on teens and what they are into these days. Begs the question on how best to serve this demographic.

"Matthew Robson, a 15-year-old intern at analyst firm Morgan Stanley recently helped compile a report about teenage media habits. Overnight, his findings have become a sensation...which goes to show that people are either obsessed with what "the kids" are into or there's a distinctive lack of research being done on this demographics' media use. Robson's report isn't even based on any sort of statistical analysis, just good ol' fashioned teenage honesty. And what was it that he said to cause all this attention? Only that teens aren't into traditional media (think TV, radio, newspapers) and yet they're eschewing some new media, too, including sites like Twitter."