Happy Friday Everyone! Does anyone have an after school monitoring type of program set up? If so can you tell me what you do? Do you pay someone to come in and monitor or do you dedicate a staff member to this? We currently have a difficult and large group of middleschoolers frequenting the library. Our teen room is located down behind the shelving away from our desk, and it has become frustrating for the clerks who are working the desk to constantly go back and forth from the teen room all the time afterschool. We do feel the need to have a monitor in the area of the teen room for the hours after school. We have security cameras in the room but this has not deterred some of the problem behaviors we are seeing. We have tried offering programs geared towards the group. They do not want to participate in programs, they are are just looking for a hangout/wifi space. It would be fine for them to come in and talk and use the wifi if there wasn't so much drama all the time - we have kids fighting, crying, becoming too affectionate, etc. We want the library to be a safe space and all the drama is making it uncomfortable to the people who do want to use the space appropriately. I am torn about what to do with this because we are happy that our space is being used heavily by the teens and tweens but we do feel it is not going well for them to be basically unsupervised in this area, so that is why I am asking about any libraries that have a monitor system set up. I am afraid a monitor might drive away all the teens so I am interested in a monitoring system that has worked, where teens and tweens still feel comfortable using the library, but also they are being monitored so that problem behaviors are kept at a minimum. Thanks for any thoughts and ideas! Andrea Andrea Estelle, Library Director "Brighten the Corner Where You Are" Every Great Community Deserves a Great Library www.otsegolibrary.org <http://www.otsegolibrary.org/>
