Sonoma County Library launches effort to increase membership among teens

Back in the days of card catalogs, children and their parents visited libraries as a matter of routine. Now, they have access to a world of information with a click of a mouse.

Data shows that less than a third of roughly 10,000 seventh- and eighth-graders in Sonoma County have active library cards, a startling fact at odds with bygone years when not having a card was unusual.

Hoping to reverse current trends, the Sonoma County Library has launched a membership drive this month aimed specifically at kids who are on the cusp of entering high school, when access to information is paramount to academic success.

“We want to underline the fact that the library is there for them,” said Kathy DeWeese, coordinator of children’s services for the 13-branch library system. “We have books, study materials, resources, enrichment and entertainment just for teens and students, and the librarians love to help them with anything they need.”

Libraries face stiff competition from computers, e-books, video game consoles and myriad other educational and entertainment options kids can access from virtually anywhere. But for 13-year-old Tyler Heil, nothing beats the library as a place for learning and hanging out.

“Libraries are a great resource for finding information and having plain fun. You can really explore your imagination,” the teen said this week at the Petaluma Library.

Raven Schlueter, a seventh-grader at Live Oak Charter School, agreed, saying that if she stares too long at a computer screen she feels like she might “vomit.”

However, Liliana Ontiveros, a sixth-grader at Old Adobe Elementary School who visited the Petaluma branch this week with her mother and younger brother to return two books Ontiveros used to write a report on miniature pigs, said she understands why many of her peers don’t visit libraries.

“It’s hard for sixth-graders to be quiet because they’ve been cooped up all day long,” she said.

Libraries nationwide are rolling out youth programs as a strategy for remaining in operation, according to Chris Shoemaker, president of the Young Adult Library Association, a division of the American Library Association.

He said the percentage of teens in Sonoma County who have library cards roughly mirrors percentages nationwide. Some view that data as further evidence of the diminishing role libraries have in the Internet age.

“Libraries as the repositories of books and quiet are doomed,” Shoemaker said. But he said libraries that take active roles in communities will be around for a long time.

“I’m not worried about the death of libraries at all,” he said. “We’re positioning ourselves, especially in teen services, to be the place of learning, connection and experience.”

Local library officials say many teens simply are not aware of what libraries offer, including free access to full-text magazine and newspaper databases, test preparation software and practice tests, and databases of information about current events, business, world cultures, science, biography and literature - as well as extensive collections of downloadable e-books and audio material.

Last month’s inaugural LumaCon comic book convention in Petaluma drew hundreds of participants, most of them kids. The event was organized by the Petaluma Library and libraries at the city’s two public high schools. Heil joined with other teen organizers of the event at the Petaluma branch this week to toast their success with pizza.

The Petaluma branch also is rolling out a drop-in knitting class for teens and tweens. Diana Spaulding, the teen and adult services librarian, said the idea came to her after she spotted how much fun a class of adult knitters was having.

Spaulding said the library could always do a better job of marketing services to teens. That’s a particularly challenging task in California, which has the lowest rate of professional librarians assigned to public schools of any state in the nation.

For this month’s card drive, librarians hope to visit as many seventh- and eighth-grade classes as they can to extol the virtues of libraries and hand out applications for cards. Kids can also apply for cards by visiting branches or going to sonomalibrary.org.

You can reach Staff Writer Derek Moore at 521-5336 or derek.moore@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @deadlinederek.