The most important thing when involving young people is to be clear about why we want to involve them and which young people we want to target. We also need to make sure that the young people and their suggestions are going to be positively received not just by children's staff but by all counter staff and managers.

Once we've done this groundwork, the next step is to think about how we want to involve young people.

The list of possible ways to involve young people is extremely long; if you itemised all the functions of a library, you could probably involve young people in most of them.

In the following sections you can look at three main ways to involve young people.

One-off consultation
This provides starting points for discussion with young people - for example through surveys and focus groups

Short-term projects
This is about involving young people in discreet projects such as makeovers and stock selection

Sustained partnership
In these partnerships libraries are embedding young people's involvement - for example through advisory groups and volunteering

Move on to the next section to find out more about One-off consultation