It's a normal evening in the library. Sadie, one of your young volunteers is busy collecting the ideas from the young people's suggestion box. Jardane, Micha and Carmella, who are drinking hot chocolate in the youth café, engage her attention by talking about the quiz in Bliss magazine.

Next door, in the meeting room, a group of young people are having a discussion about how to spend the young people's activity budget. Darren wants to invite a poet to run some performance workshops but Maz, the chair, points out that the results of the recent consultation exercise with the local youth club showed that DJ workshops are the most popular activity at the moment. They agree to contact a local MC and then go out in the library to set up the music for the youth night.

As they open the doors, there's a queue of young people around the block. They pour in excitedly, stopping to talk to the library staff about recent good reads, swarming onto computers to do homework, rushing to look at the display of new books that they helped to buy.

...only a dream?

This could be the future of your library. In fact, all of these elements are already being incorporated in public libraries around the country with great success. At the heart of these ventures lies the active involvement of young people.

Set out to consult and engage young people in your area and you will soon find your service being shaped by their ideas. Build effective partnerships with young people and you will arrive at a situation where

young people are empowered and responsible users of the library service
library staff are confident and enthusiastic about sharing their knowledge and skills with young people
library spaces are colourful and modern, designed by young people to serve the needs of today's youth

It's not just a dream!

In working through Making the Library Welcoming, Treating People Well and Involving and Consulting Young People you and your colleagues will acquire and develop the skills and knowledge to make your reader development services vibrant and relevant to children and young people. Through the kind of consultation and participation activities explored in this section your service will certainly be connecting with young readers.

Helping Young Readers Develop offers just some of the activities which libraries do to inspire young people's reading and open up their reading horizons. All the resources there are based on contributions from library practitioners nationwide.

As with the rest of this Their Reading Futures website, the resources in this section will be further developed in response to your feedback and using your contributions. So keep using TRF Coffee Break, our online discussion forum. Or submit your own work and case studies for sharing with the TRF community though our submit content pages. Alternatively, you can email info@theirreadingfutures.org.uk.