My coworker Elissa Webber emailed to tell me about a spur of the moment program she lead one night while she was talking with kids about music:
…we decided to create a Pandora account for the branch. It was a lot of fun for both me and the kids! The other CR librarian at my branch, Anina, and I also created a librarian station there, but we’re so far apart in age that it’s hard to agree on many artists/songs.
This is a great example of a librarian using a new tool to do a traditional library service and in the process introduce young people to the participatiory web.
One of the neat things about Pandora is that you can create multiple stations, so it’s certainly possible to have one station for librarians and another for kids.
Of course, this just pushes the discussion out one level, since you’d then need to decide whose station to play.
You could create a different station for different favorite books …
It was a spur-of-the-moment program originally, but I actually have done this “program” many times now, with some of the original young people, as well as with other kids. It’s been a few months, but I could see picking it back up again late this spring, as school is winding down. It’s more the creating than the listening that they enjoy. They’d rather watch a video on YouTube than listen most of the time, but they love talking about what songs they like at any given time.
Here’s the link to the kids’ Pandora station:
http://www.pandora.com/?sc=sh40643584827592659
Or this one if you just want to see it, rather than listen:
http://www.pandora.com/stations/679b0e96f0a8ab732c371c8a839431ffbe65aaf34da7c82c#