TAG Meeting Minutes 3/2/10

by Rachel

TAG Meeting Minutes
3/2/10
11:30 – 1:00
Meeting Room B

WHO WAS THERE
Darian, Zoe, Shecharya, Derek, Naftalia, David, Rachel, Jason, Brian

RECRUITING NEW MEMBERS
You had some great ideas for recruiting new TAG members! Here they are, in no particular order:

  • Make posters to hang up at school
  • Distribute fliers to friends & members of existing clubs
  • Flash Mob / Flash Freeze, followed by flier distribution
  • Wear banana suit on ped mall, followed by flier distribution
  • Make TAG bookmarks and distribute at ICPL
  • Give TAG applications to all Summer Reading Program participants
  • Bake sale:  make cakes and/or pizzas that say “TAG”
  • Create Facebook Group and invite Facebook Friends to join TAG
  • Advertise on local radio & TV (The Library Channel?)
  • Hire Skywriter / Blimp to advertise TAG
  • Invite existing ICPL Volunteers to join TAG
  • Word of mouth — invite your friends!

At the April TAG meeting we’ll decide which ideas we like best (and are most realistic :) )and start working on them.

UPCOMING EVENTS
YES, we are on for a gelato-making tour at Capanna in April!  This might be a registration-only event with limited openings — we’ll keep you posted.  We’ll try to make sure TAG doesn’t conflict with prom on 4/17.

In May we’ll have a ginormous party and play outdoorsy games such as tag, hide-and-go-seek, sardine, and kickball.

ECO SUMMER READING PROGRAM
Your eco give-away & event ideas:

  • Bike accessories (bells, water bottles, etc.)
  • Seed packets
  • eBook gift certificates
  • Gift certificates to erase library fines
  • Bike day!  Bike safety, bike repair, helmet decorating
  • Invite master gardener to give presentation
  • Produce “Horticulture Friday” teencast
  • Learn how to make handmade paper & altered (note)books

BLOG & PODCAST STATS
Some of you were wondering if anyone ever reads the blog or listens to the podcast.  WELL!  This month the blog has had 2621 unique visits by real people, and the most recent podcast has been downloaded, played directly from the blog, or picked up via RSS feed 113 times!

…AND OTHER STUFF

  • Brian is going to start planning and attending some teen events!
  • TAG members expressed interest in having a greater influence on library decisions.  We will explore ways to make this happen, including the possibility of TAG contributing input to the Library Board.
  • Someone asked if 18 & 19 year-olds can participate in TAG, even if they have already graduated from highschool.  We’ve never considered this before!  We’ll keep this in mind when recruiting for next year’s TAG.

TAG Meeting Minutes 1/9/10

by Rachel

TAG Meeting Minutes
1/9/10
1:30 – 3:00
Meeting Room B

WHO WAS THERE
Emma, Erin, David, Zoe, Kim, Rachel, Jason

ANIME FEST
Anime Fest 2010 is coming!  This year’s fest will be on Saturday February 13, and will feature anime film screenings, J-Pop music, DIY bento boxes, and books talks about our favorite manga (à la David and Kim).  Meanwhile, Emma has agreed to blog about anime vs. manga, and maybe Erin will even tell us what she thinks of Yotsuba… — thanks everyone!  Email teens@icpl.org if you have any other ideas to make this year’s Anime Fest the most amazing ever.

FAHRENHEIT 451
ICPL is launching The Big Read of Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 on February 1st!  TAG’s contribution to this huge community event is going to be another one of our thoughtful and poignant podcasts (you know, the ones where we discuss G.I. Joe super powers and “Blawesome”-ness).  So get reading ASAP — it’s really short! — and come with your radio voices to February’s TAG meeting.  David is going to blog about upcoming Fahrenheit 451-ness in late January, and Kim will keep the blog posts coming in February.

UPCOMING EVENTS
So another year of TAG is halfway over :(   We are still going to try to fit in a movie night, gelato-making tour, and playground games extravaganza (including the game “tag.”)  We are thinking March = movie night, April = gelato-making tour, and May = outdoorsy end-of-the-year bash.  Stay tuned for more info!

ECO SUMMER READING PROGRAM
What are your ideas for Eco SRP?  We brainstormed a few ideas at the meeting, including a bike repair workshop, an ICPL community garden, and reusable water bottle giveaways.  Email teens@icpl.org with your Eco SRP ideas, or just leave us a comment!

TAG Meeting Minutes 12/1/09

by Rachel

TAG Meeting Minutes
12/1/09
4:30 – 6:00
ICPL Meeting Room E

WHO WAS THERE
Kim, Darian, Shecharya, Naftalia, Zoe, Alek, Jason, Rachel

PODCAST
Yesss, we finally recorded a new podcast!  Topics included:  New Moon, Life-Threatening Knitting Catastrophes, No Shave November, and Cheese Club.  Now that’ we’ve got the recording, it’s time to crank this puppy out.  Hop on over to Teen Tech Zone during Winter Break Dec. 21-23 and Dec. 28-31 from 1:00-4:00 if you want to get teched out and earn some volunteer hours.

“CRAFTY TEENS @ HOME EC. WORKSHOP”
December’s event is. . . felted soap?  OK, I didn’t know what that was either, but it looks pretty awesome! Meet in the ICPL lobby on Saturday Dec. 19 at 12:45 to head over to Home Ec. Workshop and get your craft on.  Registration is limited to 15, so sign up here, now!

“THE BIG READ”: FAHRENHEIT 451
The Iowa City Public Library is doing an awesome series of events about Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, sci-fi, censorship, and more in February 2010.  TAG is going to tackle this book with an amazing and creative project (we just don’t know what it is yet!).  Read it over break, finish it up by the January TAG meeting, and we’ll plan something crazy-fun and Fahrenheit 451-related for February’s event.

TAG Meeting Minutes 10/6/09

by Rachel

TAG Meeting Minutes
10/6/09
4:30 – 5:30
ICPL Meeting Room B

WHO WAS THERE
Kim, Darian, Shecharya, Naftalia, Jason, Rachel

VOLUNTEER HOURS
So I need to know how many hours you spent on TAG-related activities in September, as well as August. How many hours did you spend at TAG meetings & events, working on podcasts, and writing blog posts? Let me know by this Tuesday (Oct. 13) at the latest. If you don’t tell me how many hours you volunteered, then I can’t give you credit — and that would be sad. :(

“VIDEO GAME SHOWDOWN”
This is happening ideally some Saturday in November from 1-3:00 p.m. Keep your little eyeballs peeled for the official date, coming soon.  We’ll have our November TAG meeting before the tournament, at noon, with pizza. Shecharya has been dubbed the Tournament Master, due to his logistics expertise. There will be prizes! Snacks! And non-video games such as Apples to Apples! I think I also promised Kim that I would bring my cribbage board, so get excited.

HI, NEW MEMBERS!
New members Darian and Naftalia were at Tuesday’s meeting. It was so great to see both of you — you had great ideas for our upcoming events!

PODCASTS / BLOG POSTS
It’s official: Zoe and Shecharya are our Podcast Directors. Kim, David and Darian are our Blog Editors. Keep your eye out for info from them about upcoming podcast / blog projects.

Also, check out the blog for a super write-up by our Scribe, Erin, about the Banned-Books Read In. Emma took photos, which I hope she will share with us on the blog sometime very soon!

Banned Books Read-In Summary.

by Erin

A read-in to celebrate our freedom to read occured Thursday. Some topics included, freaky same book covers (see below),  and mangos/ other citrus friuts. We tried a variaty of banned books including TTYL, The Stupid’s Die, and The Book of Bunny Suicides. (Can you see a pattern here?) So you may be wondering, “Banned books? Why/ How do they ban a book?” Well, it basicly has to do with the content of the book and some parents complain to take it out of school libraries. The content is usually not “age appropriate” according to them like, in Shel Silverstiens book of poems it “encourages children to break dishes insted of washing them.” Cookies and water were present.

Teen Read-In : Banned Books Week

by jason

We’re getting ready for Thursday night’s “Banned Books Week” read-in event!  Meet us in the teen area from 7-8 p.m. on the 1st and celebrate your right to read.  We’ll have some of your favorite banned books available (The Catcher in the Rye, The Golden Compass, TTYL, Gossip Girl, and remember Captain Underpants?) or bring whatever free reading you wish.  We’ll have snacks and maybe you can share some thoughts about your freedoms for the teen podcast.

“What is Banned Book Week” you ask?  Well it is sponsored by the American Library Association and is a celebration of Intellectual Freedom, the idea that you have the right to “access information and express ideas, even if the information and ideas might be considered unorthodox or unpopular.”

In the United States most of the challenges (an attempt to remove or restrict materials) are made at school and public libraries often by parents and concerned library patrons who believe the materials are not acceptable for the audience (see the charts here).  Although some of these challenges are made with the best intentions, we do not believe in restricting access to those materials, we follow the Free Access to Libraries for Minors, an interpretation of the Library Bill of Rights that states, “Librarians and governing bodies should maintain that parents—and only parents—have the right and the responsibility to restrict the access of their children—and only their children—to library resources” (see this for more info).

Too many words for you?  How about this video (with puppets):

This Just In: TAG Survey Results

by Rachel

We just wrapped up our TAG Survey to decide upon what adventures the ICPL Teen Advisory Group will be embarking this year.

Of the 12 ideas that made their way into the poll, 7 emerged as definite winners:

Gelato making (and eating) tour at Capanna
Outdoor games day at playground
Fired-Up / Beading / Crafts
Video game tournament
Movie watching night
Video Scavenger Hunt
Make a “Movie in Minutes”

TAG members also voted to meet on alternating Tuesdays at 4:30 and Saturdays at 2:30.

We used the free online software provided by Survey Monkey to conduct our survey, and the graph was created using the National Center for Education Statistics’ (NCES) free graph-making software to display the results.


TAG Meeting Minutes 9/2/09, Part 2

by Rachel

Hey TAG members, remember those applications you filled out to be in TAG, once upon a time?  Thus revealing your deepest darkest secrets about your favorite books, movies, music, videogames and hobbies?  Well, I thought it would be cool to put all that info together in one place so you can see what each other are up to.  This is how we wrapped up our September TAG meeting:

Books we love
Artemis Fowl, The Book Thief, Harry Potter, Romeo & Juliet, A Wrinkle in Time, Raven’s Gate, Howl’s Moving Castle, Brokeback Mountain, The Other Boleyn Girl, Pride and Prejudice, A Series of Unfortunate Events, Shadow of the Red Moon.  Additional authors: J.R.R. Tolkein, Libba Bray, Mildred D. Taylor.

Movies we love
Donnie Darko, Billy Madison (2 votes!), The Longest Yard, The Illusionist, The Prestige, Braveheart, Phantom of the Opera, Eurotrip.

Music we love
Black Eyed Peas, Eminem, Akon, 303, T-Pain, Rise Against, Secondhand Serenade, Panic at the Disco, Cobra Starship, We the Kings, Radiohead, The Beatles, New Order.  Other genres:  Japanese bands, classic rock, Spanish rock, operas, hip-hop, rap.

Videogames we love
Rock Band, Final Fantasy, Super Smash Bros, American Idol, The Sims, Mario Kart, Guitar Hero.

TV Shows we love
Lost, The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, Six Feet Under, Japanese dramas on YouTube.

Other things we like
Sports, football, swimming, biking, Tae Kwon Do, tag, hide-and-seek, reading, writing, drawing, photography, singing, piano, saxophone, computers, blogging, refurbishing furniture, sewing, chess, fan-fiction, pizza, Magic: The Gathering, helping out at animal shelters.

TAG Meeting Minutes 9/1/09, Part 1

by Rachel

TAG Meeting Minutes
9/1/09
7:00 – 8:30
ICPL Meeting Room B

WHO WAS THERE
Emma, Kim, Derek, David, Alek, Shecharya, Jason and Rachel.  We started out by telling everyone our name, grade, school, and Two Truths and a Lie about ourselves.  Also, Rachel brought a zillion cookies and Shecharya decimated a snickerdoodle.

BANNED BOOKS READ-IN
Our first TAG event of the new year will be a “Read-In” at the library on Thursday October 1st at 7:00 p.m. to celebrate Banned Books week.   At the Read-In you’ll have the option to write your own proclamation about a banned book that you love.  Come to the 2nd floor tech lab for Teen Tech Zone on Thursdays from 3-5 if you want to help design a multi-media Banned Books Collage before the Read-In.

TAG SURVEY
Check out the TAG Survey on SurveyMonkey!  Survey results will be counted up on Thursday Sept. 10.  We’ll be deciding what amazing adventures we’re going to have this year, as well as the best meeting times for everyone.

VERY OFFICIAL TAG LEADERS
We have some extremely talented and attractive teens taking over some official TAG duties:
1) photographers:  Emma, Derek
2) scribes: None yet
3) podcast directors: Shecharya
4) blog editors: Kim, David
More to come soon from these fantastic people about what to expect from the blog and podcast this year.  They are busily hammering out their plans.  Please talk to Rachel if you want to join in on the fun!  Extra points for scribe volunteers…

TEEN TECH ZONE
Teen Tech Zone will be open this Thursday for a run-down on how to post to our fabulous teen blog.  If you don’t have a username & password for the blog yet, or if you just want to learn cool tricks like embedding videos and hyperlinking, feel free to stop by any Thursday from 3-5 in the 2nd floor tech lab at the library.  The one exception is that Teen Tech Zone will be closed in two weeks on Thursday, September 17.

VOLUNTEER HOURS
You’re in charge of tracking your own hours.  Extra hours for podcasting and blogging!  Report back to Rachel at the end of every month to get volunteer credit.

TAG, You’re It! Join the Teen Advisory Group

by Rachel

Calling all 7th-12th graders: ICPL is now accepting applications for the ‘09- ‘10 Teen Advisory Group.  TAG meets about once a month to talk about books, play video games, blog, podcast, plan library events and EAT PIZZA.  So much pizza…  Join just for fun, or to earn volunteer hours for graduation.  (This looks pretty fantastic on a resume.)

Interested in joining?  We’ve got just a few questions for you here.  Applications are due at the fiction desk on the 1st floor by Tuesday, August 25th at 8:00 p.m., or send them c/o Jason Paulios, Iowa City Public Library, 123 S. Linn Street, Iowa City, IA 52240.  Space is limited, but we’ll contact you at our earliest opportunity, and might even call you for a short telephone interview.  For more information, you can call Jason at (319)887-6075 or email teens@icpl.org.  Good luck!!!

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