Teens

are taken seriously at Trinidad’s Carnegie Public Library. Our Young Adult’s Department focuses on encouraging adolescent readers to explore themselves and their world through literacy.  The Young Adult Collection is set apart from titles for younger readers, providing a comfortable setting that encourages exploration. A wide range of text materials, including award-winning literature for young adults, popular series, and an excellent nonfiction collection of thought-provoking titles on contemporary issues can be found on our shelves.   Audio books round out the collection; popular titles can be found on CDs and cassettes.

Trinidad’s Carnegie Public Library prides itself on offering a comprehensive reading and recreation program each summer. Young adults can participate in several ways. 

• A cooperative effort between the Library and the Trinidad School District awards special incentives to middle school students. A district-provided computer is housed right at the library to allow students to take the Accelerated Reading quizzes on which those rewards are based.  
• Also, teens are recruited to serve as library assistants. Their tasks include helping or performing at the activity programs, reading aloud to younger children, listening to book reports, and shelving materials.
• For some, this experience satisfies their high school’s graduation requirement of community service; for others, it serves as the first step on the path to a library or teaching career.

The Library Director, the Library Board of Trustees, and the Friends of the Library organization wants to provide a Young Adult Wing so that teens will have a place of their own inside the library.  Work has begun already.  A room in the lower level is being emptied, remodeled, and renovated.  Generous grants from the Bar NI Community Service Fund and the Trinidad Community Foundation have provided money to purchase computers and other electronic technology.  Gaming has become a popular pastime in libraries throughout the Colorado; Trinidad’s Carnegie Public Library will join the vanguard by holding Wii and other video gaming events in 2009.