Help! The Teen Librarian Has Left the Building

I attended this workshop featuring Woburn's YA Librarian Christi Showmann-Farrar and Natick's former YA Librarian, Abby Reidy. I've known Christi and Abby for awhile and I was really looking forward to hearing them speak. The title intrigued me because I thought it was about what to do when the YA librarian no longer works at the library (or in some cases works at the library in a different capacity). However, it addressed the need for how to perform YA services, such as readers' advisory, when the YA librarian goes home for the evening. While the readers' advisory section of this workshop was a little familiar to me, it was good to hear some of it, again, plus I did learn some new sources for finding book lists. She offered a lot of websites, which can help anyone doing readers' advisory for young adults, such as: YALSA's booklists and Austin Public Library's booklists. Christi also gave some tips on how to talk to teens when doing readers' advisory, such as never talking down to them, but also never pretending you are one of them. She also stressed that it's important to talk to the teens and not the parents, even though the parents are often the ones asking all of the questions.
Abby discussed her rewards program for good behavior by teens. For answering trivia questions, making a purchase request, writing book reviews, or for overall good behavior, teens can earn what's called Moo-La and reimburse it for a variety of prizes, including paying off fines. She said that full size candy bars were once an option but the sugar highs were a little much at times! I think we would have to modify this for our library, but I do like the idea of encouraging purchase requests, and good behavior, as well as using that good behavior towards fines. An interesting idea.