I reviewed some of my favorite libraries web pages/blogs and found most of the blogs to contain nothing more than a vehicle for library announcements, similar to a calendar of scheduled events. The exception was the Teen Blog at the Westport Connecticut Public Library. Jaina Lewis, the Teen Services Librarian has authored the Teen Blog since 2006. Considering the complexities of capturing a teen audience in a library, Ms. Lewis categorizes her blog postings by authors, books, DVD’s, Did You Know, events, gaming, lists, movies, music, special topics, television and You Tube. She incorporates some form of media (images, video and audio) in each posting which clearly captures the reader’s attention.

Whereas the author’s intended audience are teens, the variety of topics that she covers, would be of interest for many adults. The recent posts included a synopsis of The Guinness Book of Records; audio/video (You Tube) feed about the local high school book fair; information about the online Facebook game Scrabulous and reviews of recently released books.

Although there were seven postings for the month of May, the archives revealed less frequent postings, some months having only one posting. It is not clear as to why the inconsistencies, be it time constraints or lack of material. In addition, I did not see any comments to her postings, nor did I see any remarks by the author encouraging the readers to comment! Regardless I thoroughly enjoyed the variety of her postings. Check it out Westport Public Library TEEN Blog