Let library loose: teens and young adults as content creators at Hattula Public Library

In the recent years we have put a lot of effort in developing digital content for and with our young clients in the Hattula public library. This paper discusses three projects that were fulfilled during the years 2012-2013. During the summer 2012 three teens who worked as summer help wrote, filmed, edited and acted in several digital videos that dealt with breaking common library stereotypes. Our goal was to increase client participation and human agency and on the other hand use our young clients’ view in service design. The videos were subsequently published on our library’s YouTube-channel . The following summer (2013) the summer workers developed an information retrieval game which doubled as a murder mystery. The idea of the game was to engage youth in to using library in a new way as a ‘game board’. The summer workers’ team produced a cinematic trailer for the game. The third part of the project during autumn 2013 was a digital story workshop for ninth graders (15 years) called ‘What bugs you in Hattula?’ The participants were asked to think of things that irritate young people living in Hattula; e.g. infrastructure, recreation possibilities, transportation. Working in groups they produced digital stories of their views and ideas. We have been able to use the videos in promoting our library services and in developing co-operation with local schools. There has also been an evident growth in the amount of teens and young adults using the library in the past two years. On the other hand, the project has had an effect on the employees of the library: we are now more open to new ideas and new ways of working, not to mention that we have learned to experiment more freely.