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A recurring after school homework and chill space for teens (and tweens!) as they waited for their rides after school.

This provided teens the opportunity to connect with one another, balance school work and social time, and a low-pressure environment to get to know their new teen librarian.

This program greatly decreased incidents with teens because they were given space to express themselves and knew they had the program to look forward to when it wasn't being held.

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In light of current events, I collaborated with Allison Ryan to create this resource guide providing teens with ways to increase their personal and social awareness regarding social justice and racial equity topics.

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International Trans Day of Visbility 2020

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International Trans Day of Visbility 2020

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Increasing the awareness of trans identities and support for trans teens in throughout the county, including local news articles detailing some trans experiences in the county throughout the years.

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An LGBTQ Timeline to help LGBTQ teens connect with their history through Ocean County Library resources.

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In December of 2019 I was interviewed by WebJunction when my 10 year challenge book display caught the eye of some librarians through a facebook group!

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Kelsea Rowan is Young Adult Librarian at the Point Pleasant Borough Branch of the Ocean County Library in New Jersey. When we saw Kelsea Rowan post photos of her 10 Year Challenge book display to Library Think Tank - #ALATT, we had to reach out to learn more! She graciously agreed to share more about her fantastic display, including the display templates that she created using Canva.
Tell us a bit about your library, your role, and how you approach book displays. How often do you change things up and where your ideas come from?

Photo: 10 Year Challenge Book Display, by Kelsea Rowan

My library is the Point Pleasant Borough Library, a medium branch within the Ocean County Library system in New Jersey. We serve a large shore community and we're lucky enough to be located right across the way from our local high school and middle school. I just started working with our teen patrons as our Young Adult Librarian in October as I'm finishing up the last semester of my graduate program but I'm ecstatic to be here and I've hit the ground running.

I previously worked in the system as a summer library assistant, managing our teen volunteer program where I loved focusing on creating book displays and other forms of readers advisory for young adults. Current events or trends always guide my book display decisions, and they usually focus on social justice. I try to create something aesthetically pleasing and trendy so that they will catch someone's eye, and look to include added elements (bookmarks, blurbs, pins) that a patron will be drawn in by or can even take away with them.

Photo: Librarian Kelsea Rowan's, #10yearchallenge

Most of my displays stay up for about a month but if I have a great idea I'm excited about, I'll switch them out early. The one-month time frame is mainly due to using collectionHQ to evaluate the circulation success of a display, and one month is usually the minimum to receive results. But I'm not afraid of a permanent display! I recently put up an on-going display "The Middle Ground" that features "just right" reads for older middle schoolers, who may feel too old for J books and aren't yet interested in young adult books that skew a little older, since a lot of my patrons fall into this category. This was inspired by Kylie Peters at FlashlightChronicles whose library has a display of the same name and theme; their site is an amazing resource for recommended reads for this age group. (See also Kylie's posts on YALSA's blog, Middle School Monday: Building a Middle School Public Library Collection, Part 1 and Part 2).

The Library Think Tank Facebook group and Pinterest provide a lot of inspiration, but I usually think up an idea myself and go to these sources to see if anyone else has done them yet to get suggestions about how to execute them.

How did you come to decide on the 10 Year Challenge display and how did you pick the books?

When it comes to social media, I consider myself an "active observer" and I don't usually participate - but I do check in often and love the Timehop app. For those who aren't familiar, Timehop will pull up your daily social media posts for as far back as your account goes. When I found the 10 Year Challenge on Facebook I thought it was an awesome idea and I even participated, it was fun seeing everyone's transformations (or even, lack thereof) from 2009 to 2019. I saw a few friends from high school doing it and then it began to snowball - popular media outlets began posting photos of celebrities from the beginning and end of the decade and then the memes started. One day it just hit me that it would make an awesome book display, especially since the books ten years ago that were popular would have been the books I was reading as a teen.

The first place I turned to was YALSA to find books for the beginning of the decade, I started with their 2010 Top 10 Best Books for Young Adults list because all of the books on the list would have been published in 2009. After I checked most of the list and found that almost all of them had been weeded from my collection (except for two titles), I turned to their longer list of the 2010 Best Books for Young Adults, where I had more success finding titles for the display.

It was much easier to find books for the end of the decade because the New Jersey Library Association is currently holding their 25th Annual Garden State Teen Book Awards where readers of YA lit can vote for their favorite fiction and nonfiction books of the year from a list of nominated titles. I already had a display going to encourage my teens to vote in the awards so it ended up being an easy and perfect pair for this display. It highlights popular books at the end of the decade and helped me further promote the book awards to patrons.

I should also mention that I created the 10 Year Challenge banner and the small "I won" and "I was nominated" book cards for the display using templates in Canva, a free online graphic design tool we frequently use when creating displays. They have amazing templates for pretty much anything you can think of and they're very easy to edit and customize. Please feel free to use these for your own library's display or explore Canva to make your own!

What's the response been from your patrons?

The display is still so new and hasn't been up very long. We recently shared it on our system's Facebook page and I'm hoping it'll become more popular now that we've officially entered December and the new year will be on everyone's minds. I will say that my staff loves it and the response on Facebook was amazing!

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When we saw Kelsea Rowan post photos of her 10 Year Challenge book display to Library Think Tank - #ALATT, we had to reach out to learn more! She graciously agreed to share more about her fantastic display, including the display templates that she created using Canva.

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In collaboration with the High School's Key Club we hosted a reading buddies program for Read Across American Day. The teens chose and prepared the craft, selected the titles, and ran the program!

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Each year Memorial Middle School holds their career day where professionals from different fields set up a table highlighting their jobs and answer questions from the students. We saw multiple 7th and 8th grade classes throughout the day. This was an excellent opportunity to support this initiative by the school as well as connect teens in the community with resources at the library and hopefully, inspire some future librarians.

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Summer Reading Collaboration with Children's Department 2021

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Summer Reading Collaboration with Children's Department 2021

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Collaborated with Children's Librarian, Cindy Fragale, to create curated summer reading book talking videos for all grade levels, which included assisting with editing and filming Cindy's videos for the elementary schools, creating the middle school video together, and curating the high school video that were then posted to the school's website and google classrooms.

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Ocean County Library Resources

Digital Materials - Enjoy ebooks, audiobooks, movies, magazines and more! All resources contain materials for children, teens and adults.

Hoopla - Instantly borrow digital movies, music, ebooks and more with your Ocean County Library card. Please note that an account also needs to be created.

Libby - A website and mobile application to browse and borrow ebooks and audiobooks from the Overdrive catalog. Set up your account with your Ocean County Library card. Watch a tutorial here.

- Ocean County Library's reading and activity tracker. Participate in challenges to earn fun rewards! Watch a tutorial here.

Ocean County Library Book Recommendation Videos: Please watch the video appropriate for your grade level for great book recommendations from the Ocean County Library!

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Ocean County Library Resources Digital Materials - Enjoy ebooks, audiobooks, movies, magazines and more! All resources contain materials for children, teens and adults. Hoopla - Instantly borrow digital movies, music, ebooks and more with your Ocean County Library card. Please note that an account also needs to be created.

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Summer Reading Collaboration with Point Pleasant Borough School District 2020 & 2021

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Summer Reading Collaboration with Point Pleasant Borough School District 2020 & 2021

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Ensured the availability of summer reading titles for the high school honors and AP courses by requesting additional copies of titles and recording where the titles were available through the library (physically and digitally).

Assisted with the compilation of resources for the summer reading page on the district website.

Contributed posts to the summer reading instagram to promote library prizes.

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OCL Resources for LGBTQ Teens Coping with a World in Crisis

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OCL Resources for LGBTQ Teens Coping with a World in Crisis

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"A compilation of resources for LGBTQ teens. Get lost in a new book or movie, find tips for schooling from home, and explore ways to help you cope while quarantined." My goal with this program was to help support teens who were at home during quarantine that may have been lonely, missing their support systems in school, and living in unsupportive/non-affirming environments.

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Education Initiative Support for Teachers

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Education Initiative Support for Teachers

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Assisted with class room book clubs by reserving multiple copies of one title for classrooms and promoting the use of our educator card for this type of classroom activity.

Encouraged the use of our assignment alert form to provide better support to historical fiction book report projects coming from the middle school.

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Recommended reads based on your sun sign!

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Book-o-scopes:  March Reads for Your Sun Sign - Young Adult Program

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Hosted multiple 7th grade English classes in the branch where I provided a tour, an overview of our digital resources (including a tutorial on downloading libby and checking out books), providing curated reader's advisory, and library card sign-ups.

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ALA Rainbow Book List & Stonewall Book Award Administrative Assistant

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ALA Rainbow Book List & Stonewall Book Award Administrative Assistant

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Maintained:

consistent contact with publishing agents to request copies of titles for all committee members and retrieve contact forms for authors

confidentiality of titles considered and committee opinions

spreadsheet of all requested and received titles, forms, and

Requested over 500 books for each committee and donated portions of these books I received to teachers and LGBTQ organizations

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This presentation has been requested for reprisal through a LibraryLinkNJ Webinar in October for National Coming Out Day.

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In honor of National Martin Luther King Day of Service stop by the library to get volunteer hours or learn more about volunteering at the library year-round.

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Point Pleasant Borough PRISM Club Outreach

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Point Pleasant Borough PRISM Club Outreach

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Visited PRISM, an LGBTQ club, at the high school 2x a time to provide support, recommend books, and gain feedback on library programing. These teens inspired me to create my first virtual resource, OCL Resources for LGBTQ Teens Coping with a World in Crisis.

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Volunteer Opportunities Brochure for the Point Pleasant Borough Branch

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Volunteer Opportunities Brochure for the Point Pleasant Borough Branch

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As part of our NJLA 2021 presentation "In, Out, & In-Between: Serving LGBTQ Youth in Libraries" I created the following padlet to further connect librarians to resources at other libraries and beyond to help them create inclusive programming.

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Assisted with the creation of the first ever virtual SAIL!

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Ocean County Library - Virtual S.A.I.L. 2020

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Revamped SAIL for 2021 and assisted with any troubleshooting throughout the program.

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Ocean County Resource Guide for Learning @ Home

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Ocean County Resource Guide for Learning @ Home

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Created a brief resource guide for OCL content that students could access from home during the pandemic to be displayed on the High School and Middle School Library pages.

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YA Read with Pride:  Ana on the Edge - Teen Program

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Hosted the Point Pleasant Borough High School Art Honor Society for Youth Art Month

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YA Read With Pride - National Coming Out Day

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Just right reads for the teens in between from YA and J. This is my department's most successful displays, with over 65 circs at this time. It is also an excellent opportunity to swap reader's advisory with our Children's Librarian.

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Purple Hot Neons Gradients Marketing Presentation

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Yellow and Purple Illustrated Cosmic Welcome Card

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Colorful Triangle LGBT Rights Advocacy and Cause T-Shirt

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Retro Mindfulness Productivity Goals Instagram Post

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An overview of graduate school book talks and digital content I created.

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I am a compassionate, hard-working individual. I have pursued a career in Teen Services for Public Libraries in order to continue to impact the lives of young people, share my love of literature with others, and create change. I want to encourage leadership and success in young adults, just as my mentors have for me. I am satisfied most in positions where I am able to help others and work toward a better, more inclusive future.

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Kel Rowan - Young Adult Librarian - The Ocean County Library | LinkedIn

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I am a compassionate, hard-working individual. I have pursued a career in Teen Services for Public Libraries in order to continue to impact the lives of young people, share my love of literature with others, and create change. I want to encourage leadership and success in young adults, just as my mentors have for me.

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Nothing left on Netflix Binge these series next!

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17 teens and families enjoyed a makeup tutorial by Drag Queen Story Hour's Harmonica Sunbeam. Teens enjoyed following along with her makeup tutorial and asking questions about her journey and skills!