Join the TLT Teen Advisory Board!

Did you know we have a Teen Advisory Board here at TLT? We do! We currently have 6 active TAB members and they do a variety of things like review books, share teen culture, and talk about teen issues with us. Several of our TAB members graduated or dropped out last year, so as we head into fall we are looking for a few more teen voices to help us help libraries serve teens. All voices are welcome, but we are especially interested in more diverse voices as our TAB is very white teen girl at the moment and there are a lot of viewpoints that aren’t represented. We would also like to have representation from all over the U.S., as many of our members are currently located near a TLT member. But since things can be done remotely, we’d love to have more geographic diversity as well.

Read More About TLT and Our TAB Here

At the end of the day, what we want is to hear from teens. As teen services librarians, we do our best work when we talk with and listen to our service base – teens.

We ask that TLT TAB members submit one post per month. It can be whatever type of article you like. For example, The Teen reviews for TLT, and she developed her Post It Note reviews.

The Bestie and The Teen do ARC Parties, giving us snap teen judgments of books based on their covers, titles and synopsis.

Lexi reviewed pretty regularly – oh how I miss her – and loved getting all the books and swag. She wrote pretty long and thoughtful reviews with her own point of view.

Others have posted about YouTubers, talked about issues, and more. Libraries aren’t just about books and your posts don’t have to be just book reviews, although we obviously do like book reviews because – hello – librarians!

Here are the requirements:

You need to be a teen

You need parental permission

You need a nickname, a short bio and a headshot (which will appear on the About TLT page under TLT TAB)

You need a monthly post

You need access to the Internet and the ability to share a post via email (your public library can help you with this)

You need to be willing to attend a quarterly virtual meeting or group chat

Here’s what you get:

You get to be as creative as you want to be. It doesn’t have to be a written post. You can submit a video, do bullet lists and more. Think outside the box and express yourself in ways that mean something to you while you talk about things that mean something to you.

If you want to review books, we help hook you up with books, often before they are even published.

You’ll also get to express yourself, be creative, and speak for teens.

You’ll brush up on writing and tech skills, maybe even use it as an opportunity to learn some new ones.

And when it comes time, I will sign your forms for school asking for service hours and write those recommendation letters for jobs or college. TLT is a part of the School Library Journal blog network so we have a little bit of street cred. We also have millions of page views. It looks good on a college application.

Most importantly, you’ll get to be heard!

So what next:

So if you are interested, contact me at kjensenmls at yahoo dot com and look over the following application/contract/submission guidelines.

TLT TAB Application

Filed under: Teen Involvement