Developing an Outreach Program for Teens in the Elgin Community: Teen Night Friday

Elgin Public Library had seen a decrease in teen patrons ever since the pandemic, therefore the main purpose of this capstone project was to increase teen patrons by 10-15%. The goals of this capstone project were to increase teen library users, promote library services and programs to teens, provide tools and resources to possibly create new events for teen patrons, and promote life-long learning to teens. To meet these goals, a needs assessment was created for teens in the community to take so that the library can better understand the participants and their needs. The needs assessment contained questions about the participant’s age, education level, library usage, gender, interests, and programs they would like to see at the library. In addition, the participants were asked to give the library feedback/suggestions and to express challenges they had been facing in the community. The goal was to have 100 participants take the needs assessment. Outreach and collaboration were conducted with local businesses and with the dual credit teens at the Austin Community College Elgin campus to promote the library’s needs assessment. In three weeks, 115 participants had taken the needs assessment. Using the needs assessment results, a potential program for teens was created. The results showed that the three most popular interests that teens have are music, video games, and life skills. The top 3 most voted programs that teens wanted to see at the library are life skills, video games, and DIY. Using these results, Teen Night Friday was created and in this program, teens will get to make their own pizza, play games around the library (video games and board games) and listen to music.