Teen Volunteering at the Library 

By Erik Berman

We at the library love our volunteers. Nothing personifies our vision of “Kind, Connected Humans” like bringing volunteers together to help our community and its members. As we approach a new year, with a new website, and new library services, volunteering remains as important as ever. It just might look a little different. 

How to Volunteer at the Library 

We have a new volunteer page! From there you’ll be able to find opportunities available at all libraries and track your own hours. Your hours are  tied to your volunteer account, you can access them whenever you want, days, months, or years from now when you are brushing up your resume. New opportunities will be posted by our libraries whenever they are available. To find your local library, use the “Libraries” tab on the menu bar on the left of the page. You can also use that bar to search by type of task or day. 

Once you’re at your local library’s homepage, you’ll see the specific opportunities they have available. Clicking on them will give you more information about what they are, how many hours it will take, and how to sign up.

Lastly, you can apply to be a volunteer by clicking on the grey “Fill in an application” button. An application takes only a few minutes to fill out and can be used to volunteer at all of our locations. 

What Do You Do as a Volunteer? 

All of our volunteering opportunities will be offered online for now, but online doesn’t mean you won’t be able to help out. Each location will be posting the opportunities that will best help their library and community. In general, there will be three types of opportunities. 

Advising 

We miss you. Getting to know you all is half the fun of being a teen librarian so we’re setting up virtual meetings with our teen advisory groups. There, you’ll have a chance to talk about the library, tell us what you think we should be doing, and find ways to help. You might even inspire us to design a new program. Our libraries are slowly restarting to offer these meetings, so check on your library’s volunteer page to see when it’s available. 

Helping with Programs 

Sometimes our librarians will want volunteers to help with a program. They might want you to help a librarian spread the word about a special program or help keep an important conversation going during a workshop. When they do need help, it will be posted on that library’s volunteer page. 

Writing Reviews 

Finally, we are looking for volunteers to help review our books, movies, and music and create themed lists for other members to use to find content that will interest them. All of our locations are offering this right now, so if you are interested you can begin right away.  

Sign Up Today! 

Volunteering is a great way to keep busy doing something that can make a difference in your community and we’ve spent a lot of time making it easy and fun for you. New opportunities will be posted whenever available while others, such as book reviewing, will be available all the time to satisfy your midnight book review itch. We’re all excited to open our virtual doors to volunteers again, hope you’re one of them.