The digital booktalks create an opportunity for teen librarians to share their traditional readers’ advisory knowledge with a broader customer audience beyond their physical library branches. It brings the booktalks to the online space where the teens are and offers the teens the chance to learn more about books to read and checkout from the library. Additionally, it introduces teen librarians to new technologies they can use to engage library customers and gives them an opportunity to increase their comfort level with technologies to create tangible products useful in outreach efforts to teens.

This innovation took a traditional librarian skill - the booktalk - and reimagined it in a new way for the 21st century library user. MCPL staff learned to shoot a video from outlining a shooting plan to storyboarding to learning how to use the iPad to record and edit. Applying the teen booktalk as the subject matter helped the staff learn about video because they were already familiar with booktalking. Staff recorded and watched each other’s videos and learned from each other as part of the process. The finished videos were posted online to be shared with staff and customers.

As a result of the teen digital booktalk training session, teen librarians shared their readers’ advisory knowledge with a broader customer audience beyond their individual branches, more customers learned about teen books, and staff increased their teen readers’ advisory knowledge and learned new video skills. The booktalks also increased social media interaction and engagement with readers via Facebook post likes, Twitter retweets and favorites, Pinterest repins and likes, and YouTube likes and comments. Social media interaction with the authors of the books also took place. Staff were inspired by the learning experience of the training and the creativity of their colleagues. It is anticipated that more video booktalk training will be done with adult and children’s librarians.