Flathead County teen services librarian continues to carve out space for adolescents

Starr White wants to make the library a go-to place for teenagers in the community. 

As the Flathead County teen services librarian, her efforts are already proving successful — with the revamping of the Teen Zone at the Kalispell branch, new programming and an up-to-date collection, she said more teens are already coming into the library.

White joined the staff at Flathead County Libraries, then ImagineIF Libraries, in 2021. She was hired as a professional librarian with a focus on adult and teen services. Her time was mostly spent on adult services until last year when former library director Ashley Cummins asked which age group she would prefer to focus on. 

White, who had spent much of her career working with children, knew she didn’t want to dive fully into adult services just yet, saying her “passion is with the kids.” 

“I had some ideas of how I wanted teen services to go. But, I did not have the ability to dedicate my time to it. So being able to do that now, I'm very thankful,” White said. 

Up to that point, the Young Adult collection, which is housed in the Teen Zone, did not have a dedicated librarian. Previously, it fell under the umbrella of youth services along with the children's department and later under the adult services position. Since the appointment of a dedicated teen services librarian, White said staff have seen an uptick in young adult readership, an area of the library that had largely seen a decline since 2015. 

White grew up in Las Vegas, but as a member of the Eastern Shoshone tribe, she spent many summers and winters with her grandparents on the Wind River Reservation in Fort Washakie, Wyoming. She was always a library kid and remembers adoring her childhood storytime librarian Tracy Johnson. 

“Talk about looking up to someone — she was a wonderful storyteller and an incredible artist. Those crafts and activities after storytime really helped build my confidence and gave me a world of creativity like no other place did,” White said. 

White had significant challenges with reading and writing due to a learning disability, but Johnson encouraged her to persevere. She asked White to volunteer at the library when she was 11 years old during summer reading, where it was her job to listen to younger children talk about the books they read for the program and give them their prizes. 

“Soon enough, I wanted to read all the books that these kids were reading. So I went back, at 11 years old, and started reading picture books like crazy. I must have read almost every picture book in that library,” White said. 

Hired as a page at 15, she helped shelve books and set up crafts for storytime. Those early years in the library were a transformative experience for White, who said the confidence instilled in her by Johnson has inspired her throughout her career. 

“Through her support, I discovered that having accommodations wasn't something to be ashamed of. It was an opportunity for growth and self-discovery,” White said. “Tracy created a supportive community where I felt comfortable asking for help, and where I found solidarity with others facing similar challenges. Despite my struggles with reading and writing, I always felt like I belonged in the library.” 

When it was time to go to college, she wanted to pursue a career as a clinical laboratory scientist. But, her school of choice didn’t offer the program, and selecting another school would have meant moving away while her grandfather was in hospice, so she looked inward. 

“I had to do a lot of soul searching of what I wanted to do, and becoming a librarian came up again and again,” White said. “It was my safety net. I knew what I loved, I grew up in it and I decided to embrace becoming a librarian.”

Once she decided to follow this path, White said she “quickly rose through the ranks,” starting in the Las Vegas Clark County Library district and moving to nearby Henderson Libraries soon after to work as a library advisor. After finishing her master’s degree, she moved to Kingman, Arizona, to work as a library assistant senior at the Mohave County Library. 

WORKING AS a librarian department head had always been her goal, and in 2021, an opening in Flathead County piqued her interest. 

“My great grandfather's tombstone actually has Flathead on it, because he wanted to be recognized as a Flathead. So, I looked into [the library district] and the people there were amazing, what they were doing, the programs that they had — the organization of the library system was impressive,” White said. 

After changing hats a few times at Flathead County Libraries, she is now fully “team teen” and has been focusing on how to make the library a welcoming environment for teenagers. She and other staff redecorated the Teen Zone at the Kalispell branch with vines and a neon sign, including plenty of spaces to work and read. 

They also have a slat wall, called the gem wall where White can pose programming ideas to the teens and they can submit their answers by filing the correlating colored gem into a slot. Typically there are about 500 responses from the monthly poll. 

“Most of our programs come from those, we’ll ask what kind of crafts they're looking forward to, what tech sounds exciting. Sometimes we're in agreement and I can predict it a mile away, others I’m like ‘What you mean you're not interested in Legos?’” she said with a laugh. 

One program called Level Up provides a more open-ended type of activity for teens regularly, where they work with the same tools and materials, like polymer clay, and get better at using it over time. White said teens love coming in and knowing those same crafts are there waiting for them. 

With the purchase of a Nintendo Switch, the staff started organizing Mario Kart and Super Smash Bros. tournaments and other game nights for the teens. It has been so popular, that requests are coming in from younger kids to have tournaments set up as a youth services program too. 

Another popular program making a return this year is the merch making event, where teens can use freezer paper to iron designs onto merchandise. 

IN ADDITION to working to create fun and engaging activities, White also wants the Young Adult section to be up-to-date and in line with what the community is checking out. 

It’s a section that might undergo further changes, as Flathead County Library Board trustees recently floated the idea of removing the designation altogether. Board Chair David Ingram cited concerns about its wide age range that might confuse parents when picking age-appropriate books for their children. He suggested removing the designation and replacing it with books for either “minors or adults.” 

The board could decide on the topic at their meeting on March 28, where they will discuss options regarding the Young Adult section, according to White. 

However, White has already engaged in an audit process of the Young Adult section. A list of all the books in that section looks at the recommended age range as provided by publisher Baker & Taylor, NoveList, Syndetics Unbound and nonprofit Common Sense Media, which provides ratings for media and technology. 

After looking at these age range recommendations, she and the staff found less than 1% of the books in the section had a “general adult” rating or no age range provided, all others listed the recommended age as 18 or below. 

Audits are an important tool librarians use to understand what is in collections. For this audit, White said some books will probably end up moving to the adult section. 

“It's a hard decision. But if book one of a series is in the right age group, but two, three or four really are for adults, guess what? It's a hard one, but that comes down to my choice as a librarian in our community,” White said. 

In revamping the Teen Zone, the library looked at graphic novels and manga that were previously classified as either juvenile or general. To avoid teens picking up something that had mature content, staff relocated the general manga and graphic novel collections. Additionally, they initiated the curation of a Young Adult collection for both graphic novels and manga in the Teen Zone.

Curating the collection and ordering books is one of her favorite parts of the job, says White.

About 60% of the books she orders are new titles from authors who are proven popular at the library – which she determines by looking at circulation data. Thirty percent of orderings go toward requests from patrons or “filling gaps” in the collection, which includes damaged books or novels missing from popular series. 

The final 10% comes down to her intuition as a librarian, and she looks at what books are trending nationwide that readers locally might soon be interested in checking out. To do this, she looks at lists like the New York Times Bestseller list, among others.

This process mostly applies to young adult fiction, White said. For young adult nonfiction, she looks at mostly book lists to get recommendations. 

WORKING WITH teens has been eye-opening and very rewarding. As library kids grow up, they don’t lose their passion, and White said they aren’t shy to express what they’d like to see. 

“I've learned that it's my job to listen way more than I speak. I do interject at times because they can tell you what they want, but they don't really understand the nuances of what it is. I have fun sometimes figuring out that we're both talking about apples, even when I thought they were talking about tangerines,” White said. 

She’s amazed at what teens create at the library too, and mentioned a zine making program last year. 

“For the longest time, we had an art board at Kalispell where they could pin up their artwork. And we had zines pinned up and I was amazed that these teens took the time to write a little comic, even a few pages, and put it up for another person to find and discover,” White said. 

When she thinks about the kind of librarian she wants to be, she remembers her childhood librarian who helped her reach new heights by not seeing her challenges but rather seeing only her potential. It’s something White hopes to pass along to her own patrons.

“As a librarian, I aspire to be a beacon of support and encouragement, just as Tracy was for me,” White said “I am dedicated to fostering a love of reading, providing resources and support to those in need, and advocating for the rights and dignity of all members of our community.”

More information about teen services at Flathead County Libraries can be found at https://imagineiflibraries.org/education/teens/.

Reporter Taylor Inman can be reached at 406-758-4433 or by emailing tinman@dailyinterlake.com.