Upcoming Events

Upcoming events of interest:

February 9- Black Wax-
A trip to the Black Wax Museum reveals African American inventors, a break in major league baseball, a daring escape on the Underground Railroad and women musicians ahead of their time. The performance will be followed by a soul food tasting prepared by the
parishioners of Barnegat’s Mt. Zion Baptist Church.

March 19th- TAB Game Night-
Join the Teen Advisory Board for game night! Come and play video and board games with other teens and enjoy snacks.

In the works for April:
Cherry Blossom Anime Marathon- Celebrate the sakura with the anime club! Come and watch the OVA Read or Die and enjoy Japanese snacks. Date TBA.

Lesson in Digital Photography- Join us as TAB hosts a lesson in Digital Photography! Date TBA.

One Book NJ 2008

On the table in the teen section, you will currently see on display this year's title for the One Book New Jersey program. This year's selection is "Dr. Franklin's Island" by Ann Halam. It's an interesting and provocative title- a plane crash leads to a group of teens being stranded on the private island of Dr. Franklin. They soon find out that the island stay will be worse than the crash itself...

If you can only make time to read one book this year, make is "Dr. Franklin's Island"!

If you've read this book and enjoyed it, try these other similar titles:

*Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card
*Blade Runner : (Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep) by Philip K. Dick
*The Ear, the Eye, and the Arm by Nancy Farmer
*The House of the Scorpion by Nancy Farmer
*Double Identity by Margaret Peterson Haddix
*Double Star by Robert A. Heinlein
*Point Blank by Anthony Horowitz

The Question Box

Next time you're in the teen section you may notice a new addition to the desk- the question box. This is a little experimental program I'm trying out and I hope that it becomes a big success.

The question box is there for you to ask questions, ones that you might not feel comfortable asking in person because you think it's stupid or embarassing or maybe you just didn't have time to stick around for an answer! I'll check the box every day and when I get a question I'll do my best to provide a quick answer and a list of resources related to the topic. All answers will be posted on the blog, but everything is 100% anonymous.

Never hold your TAB meeting on a school event night...

Well, I didn't get to see many of you yesterday, but I hope that you all did well in the show and look forward to seeing you in the coming month! I'd still like to meet up with everyone, so if you're in the library feel free to swing by my office or catch me on the floor.

Updates on what's happening:

-In March, I will be hosting a MySpace competition. Teens are invited to customize their MySpace and compete against others for their choice of a $10 gift card or fine reduction. This will be held at noon on March 24th.

-We're hoping to host another downloading event for adults with the collaboration of TAB this year. We can't get this in in time for March, but April is wide open right now so I'm looking for dates that will work for those of you involved.

-The March 19th TAB meeting will be followed by game night! Feel free to bring games from home, of course, and I will be bringing my extensive Wii game collection with me as well as extra controllers. I'm going to be picking up refreshments so let me know what you want!

-Moving forward, I'm looking for other events people are interested in for Spring/Summer. I'm already hoping to host a college transitions event in the early summer, a going away party of sorts for all of our graduates towards the end of summer, and some kind of anime/video game cosplay event somewhere in the mix. I'm totally open to suggestions!

Teen Advisory Board

As a quick note to everyone, the next Teen Advisory Board meeting is this Wednesday, January 16th at 7pm. Feel free to stop by! I'm going to be getting to know everyone, and we will be discussing what kinds of events we want to pursue in the future.

A hello from the new Teen Librarian at Barnegat!

Hi everyone!

My name is Samantha (call me Sam) and I'm the new teen librarian for the Barnegat branch of the Ocean County Library. I've heard from everyone here that I have a wonderful, active group of teens to work with, and I'm really looking forward to meeting you all and planning some interesting activities for the library and hopefully finding some new recruits since I hear I have a lot of people leaving.

Just to let you all know a little bit about me- I'm 24. I am currently finishing up my Master's degree at Drexel University, and I completed my undergrad in 2005 at the New Jersey Institute of Technology- my major was the history of technology, medicine and the environment. I am an otaku and a gamer. I own a Wii, a 360, a DS, and a PS2. I'm a big time Japanophile and just finished watching Death Note and The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya recently. I've heard that we have a really active anime club and I can't wait to get involved!

I'm in the library Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday from 9-5 and Wednesday from 1-9, so don't be shy!