The My Own Café project is a regional

The My Own Café project is a regional library system information & entertainment portal for teens that offers one-stop service to: • Statewide, Regional and Local Electronic Databases • Regional Announcements of YA Library Programs & Local Community Events • Immediate Access to Network’s Catalogs • Online community •

My. Own. Cafe. org Goals • To more effectively publicize library resources to teens and families. • To offer member libraries who lacked the funds or personnel to maintain a website that served the educational and recreational needs of 13 -18 yearold youth in the Southeastern Massachusetts Region. • To create opportunities for teens to interact with library staff, initiate youth service program ideas and work with other local teens to develop a dynamic library community.

Between meetings, The web developers A Teen Advisory Group Teen participation teens continued conductedcritical at met in person through has been teen via participation and surveysstagethethe chat during focus every and of site’s a team blog. groups before making development. project recommendations.

Pixel Bridge Recommendations for My Own Cafe • Messageboards as medium for teen interaction • Downloadable music • Community information • College and job information

Questions for us • Would a library card be required for registration? • How will local music be selected? • Who will monitor the messageboards? • Who will have administrative access to the site?

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Initial Logos

Technical Requirements • Hosted off site on Windows 2003 server. • Dot. Net. Nuke – open source content management system using ASP. NET • 40 GB Hard Drive, 512 MB RAM, 50 GB maximum data transfer per month.

www. myowncafe. org It’s the library—only better.

February 11 2006 Saturday Kickoff Festivities at Independence Mall in Kingston, MA

Librarian & Teen Collaboration in the Administration Process

Communication between librarian and teen administrators is ongoing and frequent through the use of our Administrative Forums sections.

Suggestions from My Own Cafe Users Have Led to Exciting New Features

Publicity Tools Developed by Teens

Recent Statistics • 326 registered teens as of April 16. • 76 users (both teen and library staff) logged in 702 times during March 2007. • Nearly 11, 700 posts on the boards since October 2005. • Our top messageboard poster – Bookworm – has more than 1, 600 posts.

Participation Inequality From Jakob Neilsen www. useit. net • 90% of users are lurkers. • 9% of users contribute from time to time, but other priorities dominate their time. • • 1% of users participate a lot and account for most contributions.

The Teen Perspective

My Own Café 2. 0 What next?

Lessons Learned • Teens are comfortable in an online form, but face-to-face is still important. • Teens will take responsibility for their own community if you let them. • You can never budget too much money for publicity.

Questions? www. myowncafe. org April Guest Login User Name: guest Password: daffodil